Cluff, T. | Search bioRxiv

bioRxiv2018

Feedforward and feedback control share an internal model of the arm’s dynamics

Humans have a remarkable capacity to learn novel movement patterns in a wide variety of contexts. Recent work has shown that, when countering external forces, the nervous system adjusts not only voluntary (ie. feedforward) control but also reflex (ie. feedback) responses. Here we show that directly altering the physical properties of the arm (i.e. intersegmental dynamics) causes the nervous system to adjust feedforward control and that this learning also transfers to feedback responses even though they were never directly trained. In our first experiment, we altered intersegmental dynamics by asking participants to generate pure elbow movements with the shoulder joint either free to rotate or locked. Locking the shoulder joint cancels the interaction forces that arise at the shoulder during forearm rotation and thus removes the need to activate shoulder muscles to prevent shoulder joint rotation. We first asked whether the nervous system learns this altered mapping of intersegmental dynamics. In the baseline phase, we found robust activation of shoulder flexor muscles for pure elbow flexion trials prior to movement onset - as required to counter the intersegmental dynamics. After locking the shoulder joint in the adaptation phase, we found a substantial reduction in shoulder muscle activity over many trials. After unlocking the shoulder joint in the post-adaptation phase, we observed after-effects, as participants made systematic hand path errors. In our second experiment, we investigated whether such learning transfers to feedback control. Mechanical perturbations applied to the limb in the baseline phase revealed that feedback responses, like feedforward control, also appropriately countered intersegmental dynamics. In the adaptation phase, we found a substantial reduction in shoulder feedback responses - as appropriate for the altered intersegmental dynamics. We also found that this decay in shoulder feedback responses correlated across subjects with the amount of decay during feedforward control. Our work adds to the growing evidence that feedforward and feedback control share an internal model of the arms dynamics.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2017

Compensating for intersegmental dynamics across the shoulder, elbow and wrist joints during feedforward and feedback control

Moving the arm is complicated by mechanical interactions that arise between limb segments. Such intersegmental dynamics cause torques applied at one joint to produce movement at multiple joints and, in turn, the only way to create single joint movement is by applying torques at multiple joints. Here, we investigated whether the nervous system accounts for intersegmental limb dynamics across the shoulder, elbow, and wrist joints during self-initiated reaching and when countering external mechanical perturbations. Our first experiment tested whether the timing and amplitude of shoulder muscle activity accounts for interaction torques produced during single-joint elbow movements from different elbow initial orientations and over a range of movement speeds. We found that shoulder muscle activity reliably preceded movement onset and elbow agonist activity, and was scaled to compensate for the magnitude of interaction torques arising because of forearm rotation. Our second experiment tested whether elbow muscles compensate for interaction torques introduced by single-joint wrist movements. We found that elbow muscle activity preceded movement onset and wrist agonist muscle activity, and thus the nervous system predicted interaction torques arising because of hand rotation. Our third and fourth experiments tested whether shoulder muscles compensate for interaction torques introduced by different hand orientations during self-initiated elbow movements and when countering mechanical perturbations that caused pure elbow motion. We found that the nervous system predicted the amplitude and direction of interaction torques, appropriately scaling the amplitude of shoulder muscle activity during self-initiated elbow movements and rapid feedback control. Taken together, our results demonstrate that the nervous system robustly accounts for intersegmental dynamics, and that the process is similar across the proximal to distal musculature of the arm as well as between feedforward (i.e., self-initiated) and feedback (i.e., reflexive) control.\n\nNEW & NOTEWORTHYIntersegmental dynamics complicate the mapping between applied joint torques and the resulting joint motions. Here, we provide evidence that the nervous system robustly predicts these intersegmental limb dynamics across the shoulder, elbow and wrist joints during reaching and when countering external perturbations.

neuroscience↗