Modulation of anticipatory postural activity for multiple conditions of a whole-body pointing task

This is a study on associated postural activities during the anticipatory segments of a multijoint movement. Several previous studies have shown that they are task dependant. The previous studies, however, have mostly been limited in demonstrating the presence of modulation for one task condition, that is, one aspect such as the distance of the target or the direction of reaching. Real-life activities like whole-body pointing, however, can vary in several ways. How specific is the adaptation of the postural activities for the diverse possibilities of a whole-body pointing task? We used a classification paradigm to answer this question. We examined the anticipatory postural electromyograms for four different types of whole-body pointing tasks. The presence of task-dependent modulations in these signals was probed by performing four-way classification tests using a support vector machine (SVM). The SVM was able to achieve significantly higher than chance performance in correctly predicting the movements at hand (Chance performance 25%). Using only anticipatory postural muscle activity, the correct movement at hand was predicted with a mean rate of 62%. Because this is 37% above chance performance, it suggests the presence of postural modulation for diverse conditions. The anticipatory activities consisted of both activations and deactivations. Movement prediction with the use of the activating muscles was significantly better than that obtained with the deactivating muscles. This suggests that more specific modulations for the movement at hand take place through activation, whereas the deactivation is more general. The study introduces a new method for investigating adaptations in motor control. It also sheds new light on the quantity and quality of information available in the feedforward segments of a voluntary multijoint motor activity.