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Related Concept Videos

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Hierarchy of Motor Control

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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 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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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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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 20, 2025

Quantifying Learning in Young Infants: Tracking Leg Actions During a Discovery-learning Task
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Generating variability from motor primitives during infant locomotor development.

Elodie Hinnekens1,2, Marianne Barbu-Roth3, Manh-Cuong Do1,2

  • 1Université Paris-Saclay, CIAMS, Orsay, France.

Elife
|July 31, 2023
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Newborn infants explore movement through variable activation of basic motor patterns. This variability decreases as they develop more consistent muscle activation for walking.

Keywords:
humaninfancylocomotor developmentmodularitymotor primitivesmuscle synergiesneurosciencetrial-to-trial variability

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Area of Science:

  • Developmental neuroscience
  • Motor control
  • Computational neuroscience

Background:

  • Motor variability is crucial for motor learning and exploration in developing systems.
  • Human infant leg movements are based on fundamental coordination patterns known as locomotor primitives.
  • The emergence and developmental trajectory of motor variability from these primitives are not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how motor variability changes during early human development, from birth to walking onset.
  • To determine the relationship between motor primitives and trial-to-trial variability in infant leg movements.
  • To understand the developmental mechanisms underlying motor exploration and learning.

Main Methods:

  • Longitudinal study of 18 infants from birth (~4 days) to walking onset (~14 months).
  • Recorded leg muscle activity during locomotor or rhythmic movements across 2-3 time points.
  • Applied unsupervised machine learning to analyze the structure of trial-to-trial motor variability.

Main Results:

  • The structure of motor variability significantly changes during early development.
  • Neonatal infants exhibit maximal motor variability by variably activating a minimal set of motor primitives.
  • Toddlers show reduced variability with more consistent activation of an expanded set of primitives.

Conclusions:

  • Human neonates utilize variable activation of basic locomotor primitives for early motor exploration.
  • Motor development involves a transition from high variability in early activation to more regular, fractionated primitive activation.
  • This developmental shift underlies the refinement of motor control leading to independent walking.