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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 28, 2026

Corticospinal Excitability Modulation During Action Observation

Corticospinal Excitability Modulation During Action Observation

Published on: December 31, 2013

Movement interference during action observation as emergent coordination.

Michael J Richardson¹, Walter L Campbell, R C Schmidt

¹Department of Psychology, Colby College, Waterville, ME 04901, USA. mjrichar@colby.edu

Neuroscience Letters

|November 11, 2008

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Motor interference during coordination is not an error but a task-specific adaptation. Increased movement variability helps manage task difficulty when movements are incongruent, suggesting a goal-driven motor control strategy.

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Efficiently Recording the Eye-Hand Coordination to Incoordination Spectrum

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Corticospinal Excitability Modulation During Action Observation

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Published on: December 31, 2013

Efficiently Recording the Eye-Hand Coordination to Incoordination Spectrum

Efficiently Recording the Eye-Hand Coordination to Incoordination Spectrum

Published on: March 21, 2019

Area of Science:

Motor control
Human movement science
Cognitive neuroscience

Background:

Motor interference occurs when individuals coordinate movements with others, leading to increased variability in non-instructed movement planes.
This phenomenon has been traditionally viewed as a form of motor error.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether motor interference reflects error or a strategic recruitment of additional movement degrees of freedom.
To explore the role of task difficulty in motor contagion during interpersonal coordination.

Main Methods:

Participants performed forearm movements coordinated with a confederate's movements at varying frequencies (fast, moderate, slow).
Coordination involved both congruent and incongruent movement conditions.
Movement variability was analyzed in the non-instructed plane orthogonal to the instructed plane of motion.

Main Results:

Oscillatory movements were observed in the non-instructed plane, synchronized with the confederate's instructed plane movements.
This coordination in the non-instructed plane occurred during incongruent movement tasks.
The findings suggest that increased variability is not random error but a coordinated response.

Conclusions:

Motor interference during incongruent coordination is an emergent property of the coordination goal, not simply motor error.
The brain may recruit additional degrees of freedom to adapt to increasing task demands and maintain coordination.
This adaptive mechanism highlights the flexible and goal-directed nature of motor control in social contexts.