Feedback and delays in neurological diseases: a modeling study using dynamical systems

Numerous regulatory mechanisms in motor control involve the presence of time delays in the controlled behavior of the system. Experimentally, we have shown that an increase of the time delay in visual feedback induces different oscillations in control subjects and in patients with neurological diseases during the performance of a simple compensatory tracking task. A preliminary model is proposed to describe the oscillations observed in control subjects and in patients with neurological diseases. The influence of delays in two feedback loops are the main components of the motor control circuitry involved in this task and are studied from an analytical and physiological perspective. We analytically determine the influence in the model of each of these delays on the stability of the finger position. In addition, the influence of stochastic elements ("noise") in the modeling equation is seen to contribute qualitatively to a more accurate reproduction of experimental traces in patients with Parkinson's disease but not in patients with cerebellar disease.