Physiology of Voluntary Movement

实验室中的许多工作都致力于理解意志的生理学。这包括愿意做出运动的感觉和使命感，即你对已经发生的运动负责。我们一直在努力设计改进的技术，以便对这些主观事件的时间进行量化测量。为了确定在进行自主运动时大脑的哪些区域被代理感激活，我们开发了一种与MRI兼容的数据手套，受试者在扫描仪中进行手部运动时将佩戴哪些数据手套。受试者将能够实时看到他们的动作，他们在实验期间收到的视觉反馈将会有所不同，以模拟不同程度的自愿控制。相关的脑电研究也将进行。 我们正在尝试确定脑电波和脑磁图的方法，以实时预测某人何时移动以及他们将做出什么移动。我们优化了预测的特征和分类方法。在具体的实验中，我们试图预测运动是右手还是左手，或者是某人的右手是否会进入左手或右手的空间场。这项工作应该与脑机接口相关，并有助于理解意志的生理学。 运动技能的学习是一个重要的功能。我们一直在研究动作如何变成自动的，也就是学习的阶段，在这个阶段，不需要花太多的注意力去做一个动作。自动性的另一个尚未被研究的特征是，当人们将注意力集中在自动阶段时，运动是如何恶化的。我们将通过fMRI、TMS和EEG来观察这些现象。我们将使用在这些研究中学到的信息来调查局灶性手部肌张力障碍患者。 有选择地运动的能力，特别是单个手指的运动，是人类的一项关键功能。运动系统的解剖学和生理学特征使这一点变得困难，因为大多数神经元(除了脊髓和脑干中的阿尔法运动神经元)不是肌肉特有的。我们的假设是，选择性运动动作必须需要抑制机制，我们正试图通过TMS来理解它们。我们将这一过程称为环绕抑制，因为不打算进行选择性动作的肌肉需要被抑制。大脑皮质中的许多抑制过程，如皮层内的短期抑制和短暂的传入抑制，可以在静止和运动时进行分析。这样的研究应该揭示哪些机制是导致环境抑制的原因。

A number of efforts in the laboratory are devoted to understanding the physiology of volition. This includes the sense of willing to make a movement and the sense of agency, that you are responsible for the movement that has occurred. We have been trying to devise improved techniques to get quantitative measures of the timing of these subjective events. To determine which areas of the brain are activated with the sense of agency when making voluntary movement, we have developed an MRI-compatible dataglove which subjects will wear while making hand movements in the scanner. Subjects will be able to view their movements in real-time and the visual feedback they receive will be varied during the experiment to simulate different degrees of voluntary control. Correlative EEG studies will also be done. We are trying to determine EEG and MEG methods to predict in real time when someone is going to move and what movement they will make. We have optimized features and classification methods for the prediction. In specific experiments, we are trying to predict whether movement will be with the right or left hand or whether someone will move their right hand into the left or right spatial field. The work should be relevant for use with a brain-computer interface, as well as being useful to understand the physiology of volition. The learning of motor skills is an important function. We have been studying how movements become automatic, that is, the stage of learning where much attention does not need to be devoted to an action. Another feature of automaticity, that has not been studied, is how movements deteriorate at the automatic stage when attention is devoted to them. We will look at these phenomena with fMRI, TMS and EEG. We will use information learned in these studies to investigate patients with focal hand dystonia. The ability to make selective movements, particularly of individual fingers, is a critical human function. Anatomical and physiological features of the motor system make this difficult since most neurons (other than alpha motoneurons in the spinal cord and brainstem) are not muscle specific. Our hypothesis is that selective motor action must require inhibitory mechanisms, and we are seeking to understand them using TMS. We refer to this process as surround inhibition, as muscles not intended for the selective action need to be inhibited. Many inhibitory processes in the cortex, such as short intracortical inhibition and short afferent inhibition, can be analyzed at rest and with movement. Such studies should reveal which mechanisms are responsible for surround inhibition.