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Related Concept Videos

Hierarchy of Motor Control01:18

Hierarchy of Motor Control

The hierarchy of motor control refers to the different levels of organization and processing involved in controlling movement in the body. These levels range from higher cortical areas involved in planning and decision-making to lower spinal cord reflexes that respond automatically to external stimuli.
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 16, 2026

Corticospinal Excitability Modulation During Action Observation
12:33

Corticospinal Excitability Modulation During Action Observation

Published on: December 31, 2013

Expertise with pathological actions modulates a viewer's motor system.

M Fiorio1, P Cesari, M C Bresciani

  • 1Department of Neurological and Vision Sciences, University of Verona, Verona, Italy. mirta.fiorio@univr.it

Neuroscience
|February 16, 2010
PubMed
Summary

Expertise in recognizing atypical movements, like those in dystonia, prevents motor system overload in health professionals. Naive subjects, however, show heightened motor activation when observing these abnormal actions.

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Motor Control
  • Clinical Neurology

Background:

  • Action understanding involves mapping observed actions to the viewer's motor system.
  • Dystonia often presents with hyperkinetic movements and muscle co-contractions, potentially overloading the motor system.
  • Health professionals may need a detached observation approach for dystonic symptoms.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if visual expertise in atypical movement kinematics influences the viewer's motor system response.
  • To compare motor system activation between clinicians and naive subjects observing fluent versus non-fluent handwriting.

Main Methods:

  • Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was used to measure corticospinal excitability.
  • Participants included clinicians with expertise in movement disorders and naive subjects.
  • Handwriting actions with fluent and non-fluent (dystonic) kinematics were observed.

Main Results:

  • Clinicians showed similar corticospinal activation for both healthy and dystonic writing observation.
  • Naive subjects exhibited hyper-activation of the motor system when observing dystonic movements.
  • Motor system hyper-activation in naive subjects was specific to affected muscles and correlated with reduced perceived fluency.

Conclusions:

  • Visual expertise and knowledge of pathological movements, such as writer's cramp, modulate the viewer's motor system response.
  • The ability to recognize suboptimal movement kinematics influences how the motor system processes observed atypical actions.
  • Observation of pathological movements differentially affects the viewer's motor system based on expertise and recognition capabilities.