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Related Concept Videos

Hierarchy of Motor Control01:18

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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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The direct motor pathways, also known as the pyramidal tracts, are a group of neural pathways that originate in the brain and descend through the spinal cord. They control the voluntary movement of the body. There are two major direct motor pathways: the corticospinal and the corticobulbar tracts.
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The indirect motor or extrapyramidal pathways originate in the brainstem, the lower portion of the brain that connects it to the spinal cord. They consist of several distinct tracts, each with specialized functions. The four main tracts of the indirect motor pathways are the vestibulospinal tract, the reticulospinal tract, the tectospinal tract, and the rubrospinal tract.
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The motor unit is a fundamental component of the neuromuscular system and plays a crucial role in coordinating muscle contractions. It consists of a somatic motor neuron, which connects and controls multiple skeletal muscle fibers, forming a single functional segment. The axon of the motor neuron branches out and establishes synaptic connections known as neuromuscular junctions with individual muscle fibers within the motor unit.
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Motor Units00:46

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A motor unit consists of two main components: a single efferent motor neuron (i.e., a neuron that carries impulses away from the central nervous system) and all of the muscle fibers it innervates. The motor neuron may innervate multiple muscle fibers, which are single cells, but only one motor neuron innervates a single muscle fiber.
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When the neuron of a motor unit fires an action potential, it triggers a series of events, leading to a twitch contraction in the muscle fibers. The process of excitation-contraction coupling is crucial in relaying the action potential to the muscle fibers.
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In Vivo Wireless Optogenetic Control of Skilled Motor Behavior
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Effector-Invariant Movement Encoding in the Human Motor System.

Shlomi Haar1,2, Ilan Dinstein3,4,2, Ilan Shelef2,5

  • 1Departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, haar@post.bgu.ac.il.

The Journal of Neuroscience : the Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience
|August 20, 2017
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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Neural populations in motor cortices encode arm movements similarly for both arms, using intrinsic joint-configuration coordinates. This finding impacts understanding of motor control and brain-machine interfaces.

Keywords:
directional selectivityfMRIipsilateral activitymotor controlmotor systemreaching movement

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Motor Control
  • Cognitive Science

Background:

  • Cortical motor control is lateralized, with each hemisphere controlling the contralateral body.
  • Ipsilateral motor areas are active during unilateral movements, but their coding remains unclear.
  • Understanding neural coding in ipsilateral areas is crucial for motor control research.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if neural coding is similar for ipsilateral and contralateral arm movements.
  • To determine if this coding uses extrinsic (world-centered) or intrinsic (joint-configuration) coordinates.
  • To examine fMRI patterns in visuomotor cortical regions during unilateral reaching movements.

Main Methods:

  • Multivoxel functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) patterns were analyzed.
  • Similarity of fMRI patterns was compared between right and left arm movements.
  • Three complementary analyses were conducted on reaching movements to identical targets.

Main Results:

  • fMRI response patterns were similar across right and left arm movements for identical targets (extrinsic coordinates) in visual cortices.
  • fMRI response patterns were similar across movements with equivalent joint angles (intrinsic coordinates) in motor cortices.
  • Evidence suggests distributed neural populations encode movements in intrinsic coordinates.

Conclusions:

  • Neural populations in motor and visual cortices encode ipsilateral and contralateral movements similarly.
  • Coding appears to be effector-invariant and based on intrinsic (joint-configuration) coordinates.
  • Findings advance understanding of motor control and brain-machine interface development.