Multisensory contributions to the planning and control of movements to to somatosensory targets

我们的许多日常动作和姿势都涉及到我们自己身体上的位置。这些动作包括：挠痒痒的鼻子，擦去额头上的汗水，鼓掌时我们的手在一起。最近的工作，包括我自己的大部分工作，发现身体位置的运动，通常被称为体感目标，与外部物体的运动（即，视觉目标）。例如，我发现，如果躯体感觉目标的位置是通过视觉信息得出的，那么当计划对躯体感觉目标的运动时，与视觉处理相关的大脑区域比视觉目标更活跃。此外，我发现，当来自非视觉来源的信息（例如，本体感觉和触觉信息）被用于确定目标位置，对体感目标位置的基于感觉反馈的校正比对视觉目标的校正发生得更快，并且更准确。总之，这些结果表明，我们获得体感目标位置的方式（例如，状态估计）可以影响运动规划和控制期间的感觉信息处理。拟议的研究计划将大大扩展我以前的工作，并检查有助于规划和控制运动的体感目标的状态估计的因素。重要的是，拟议的工作将建立对我的长期目标，了解在人类感觉运动控制过程中的神经和行为机制的多感觉整合。 拟议的研究计划将联合收割机从运动学和神经科学的创新方法，以检查是否视觉环境（项目1）或运动引起的肌肉损伤（项目2）影响如何感觉信息被用来规划运动到体感目标。这些知识对于希望为感官缺陷的人设计更好的交互环境的行业开发人员以及有兴趣为必须在疲劳时执行复杂任务的个人设计培训计划的教育工作者来说至关重要。项目3将结合联合收割机新的机器人发起的扰动和大脑刺激，直接探测神经网络参与反馈为基础的控制运动到体感目标。该项目将对人类运动控制机制产生关键的见解，并将有助于进一步开发神经系统功能模型。总的来说，这项研究的结果将影响广泛的行业，并将有助于改善加拿大社会。最重要的是，拟议的研究计划也将提供一个强大的培训环境，为不同群体的HQP。学员将学习心理学，生理学和神经科学研究技能的结合，这将使他们在学术和行业职位上都具有竞争力。

Many of our daily actions and gestures involve movements to positions located on our own body. These movements include: scratching an itchy nose, wiping away the sweat from our forehead, and clapping our hands together when applauding. Recent work, including much of my own, has found that movements to body positions, commonly referred to as somatosensory targets, are planned and controlled differently than movements to external objects (i.e., visual targets). For example, I found that brain regions associated with visuomotor processing were more active when planning movements to somatosensory targets than visual targets if somatosensory target positions were derived using visual information. Furthermore, I found that when information from non-visual sources (e.g., proprioceptive and tactile information) was used to determine target location, sensory feedback-based corrections to somatosensory target positions occurred faster, and were more accurate, than corrections to visual targets. Taken together, these results suggest that the way we derive somatosensory target positions (e.g., the state estimates) can affect sensory information processing during movement planning and control. The proposed research program will greatly extend my previous work and examine the factors that contribute to the state estimates for the planning and control of movements to somatosensory targets. Critically, the proposed work will build toward my long-term goal of understanding the neural and behavioural mechanisms underlying multisensory integration during human sensorimotor control.  The proposed research program will combine innovative methods from kinesiology and neuroscience to examine whether the visual environment (Project 1) or exercise-induced muscle damage (Project 2) affects how sensory information is used to plan movements to somatosensory targets. This knowledge will be critical to industry developers looking to design better interactive environments for people with sensory deficits and for educators interested in designing training programs for individuals that must perform complex tasks while fatigued. Project 3 will combine novel robot-initiated perturbations and brain stimulation to directly probe the neural networks involved in the feedback-based control of movements to somatosensory targets. This project will yield key insights into the mechanisms involved in human motor control and will help to further develop models of nervous system function. Overall, the findings of this research will impact a wide range of industries and will help to improve Canadian society. Most importantly, the proposed research program will also provide a strong training environment for a diverse group of HQP. Trainees will learn a combination of psychological, physiological, and neuroscience research skills that will make them competitive for both academic and industry positions.