Initiation and Control of Movement

What is motor control?

 Studying the nature of movement and how movement is controlled

 Motor control is defined as the ability to regulate or direct the mechanisms essential to
movement

Understanding nature of movement

 An individual performs a movement to meet the demands of a task within a specific

environment.
 This movement will occur based on interaction of 3 factors:
o Within the individual
o *** constraints
o Environmental constraints

Theories of motor control

 Theory of motor control is a group of abstract ideas about control of movements

 These theories provide:
o Framework for interpreting behaviour
o Guide for clinical action
o New ideas
o Working hypothesis fo examination and intervention

Reflex theory

 Sir Charles Sherrington

 For any movement to occur, there has to be a sensory stimulus
 Movement occurs in a reflexive manner
 Reflexes are building blocks of complete behaviour that occur by combined action of
individual reflexes chained together
 Eg: frog eating the prey

Limitations

 Occurrence of spontaneous and voluntary movements

o Movement in absence of sensory stimulus
o Does not explain fast and rapid movements eg: typing, fighting
o Single stimulus producing various responses. Eg: pulling child out of fire
o Novel movements eg: playing a piece learned on violin on a cello

Clinical implications
  Assessment for intactness of sensory system and reflexes is important
 Abnormal reflexes means inappropriate motor responses
 Retraining motor control using facilitatory and inhibitory techniques

Hierarchical theory

 Hughlings Jackson
 Brain has higher, middle and lower levels of control
 Top-down control where each higher center controls the lower one

Reflex hierarchical theory

 Development of mobility in humans is related to the appearance and disappearance of

reflexes in a hierarchial manner
 There is a relationship between maturation of these reflexes and child’s motor development
 This concept put together is called reflex hierarchical theory of motor control
 Neuromaturational theory of development – CNS maturation in infants tends to normal.
Motor development with emergence of higher levels of control over lower levels.
 Normally the higher centers inhibit the lower reflex centers
 Damage to the cortical centers would cause the appearance of lower level primitive reflexes

Limitations

 Unable to explain rapid movement generation

 Unbale to explain movement initiated externally
 Unable to explain the variation in movements across individuals

Clinical implications

 Reflex assessment for patients with neurologic disorders

 Helps to predict the neural age and functional development of child or patient
 Brunnstrom – in case of motor reflex lesion, there is appearance of pathological reflexes
 Bobath – abnormal postural activity in children with CP

Motor Program Theory

 Motor program describes the higher level motor programs that store rules for generating
movements for a task.
 Central pattern generator can produce patterned, rhythmic movement without any sensory
or cortical input. Eg: locomotion
 Experiment done on grasshopper, locust and cat showed that every movement is not
controlled by the grain or reflexive in nature and sensory stimulus is not necessary.
 Sensory input can modulate the action.
Limitations

 Central pattern cant be sole determinant of action

 Does not consider the musculoskeletal and environmental factors
 Could not explain all the sensory modulation and variabilities in human movement

Clinical implications

 Use of central pattern generators to improve locomotion

 Repeated practice of tasks that enable formation of ****

Systems theory

 Nicolai Bernstein
 Considered body as mechanical system with mass on which external and internal forces act
 External forces – gravity, internal forces – inertia, movement forces
 The same central command could result in quite different movements because of the
interplay between external forces and variations in the initial conditions.
 Also, the same movements may be elicited by different commands.
 The theory attempts to explain how initial conditions affect the characteristics of movement.
 Systems theory predicts real behaviour much more accurately than the preceding theories
since it considers not only what the nervous system contributes to motion, but also the
contributions of different systems together with the forces of gravity and inertia.
 Bernstein noted that we have many degrees of freedom that need to be controlled. For
example, we have many joints, all of which flex or extend and many of which can be rotated
as well.
 Degrees of freedom problem is solved by muscle synergies through hierarchical control
 The higher levels of the nervous system activate lower levels. The lower levels activate
synergies, or groups of muscles that are constrained to act together as a unit.
 Synergies determine which muscles need to work and how much force should be generated
 Synergies make the task less tedious and energy efficient.

Dynamic systems theory

 Principle of self organization states that when a system of individual elements come together
as a unit it behaves in an ordered way
 Movement can occur when all the interacting elements of the system come together as a
unit
 There is no need of commands from a higher center to achieve coordinated action
 Non linear system and behaviour - as one parameter is altered and reaches a critical value,
the system goes into a whole new behaviour pattern
 Change from one behaviour pattern to another is due to a control parameter
 Control parameter is a variable that regulates change in behaviour
Patterns of movement

 Stable movement patterns become more variable and unstable before moving to another
stable movement pattern
 Attractor well:
 The degree to which flexibility exists to change the preferred pattern of movement
 Describes the variability in movement
 The more deeper the well, the more difficult to change the state, thus more stability

Limitations

 Less importance given to nervous system

 Body is a mechanical system
 Many systems work together to generate a movement – examine and intervene each system
 Environment has important role to modify environmental contexts while treating patients
 Variability is required for optimal functioning – practice under variety of conditions

Clinical implications

 The systems theory suggests that examination and intervention must focus not only on the
impairments within individual systems contributing to motor control, but also on the effect
of interacting impairments among multiple systems
 Improve musculoskeletal system for better motor control
 Use control parameters to change in motor behaviour
 Early intervention

Ecological theory

 James Gibson
 Motor control evolved so that animals could cope with the environment around them
 The organization of action is specific to the task and the environment in which the task is
being performed
 Detecting information from the environment to control our motor actions
 Deals with how we detect this information and how we modify and use it to control our
action
 Individual is active explorer of the environment rather than just reacting to the environment

Limitation

 Less emphasis to organization and function of nervous system

Clinical implication

 As an active explorer of environment, it helps the patient to explore possibilities to achieve a

functional task in multiple ways
  Intervention should train patient to achieve a functional task in multiple ways – eg hitting the
hammer on a target
 Training should be done in different environmental contexts – eg gait training on level
surface, uneven surface

Approaches based on Reflex and Hierarchical Theory

Neurofacilitation approaches including *****

Task constraints on movement

 ‘Stability’ tasks such as sitting or standing are performed with a nonmoving base of support,
while ‘mobility’ tasks such as walking and running having a moving base of support.
 Stability requirements are less demanding in the tasks that have a nonmoving base of
support.
 Attentional demands increase in mobility tasks,
 Open movement tasks require performers to adapt their behaviour within a constantly
changing and often unpredictable environment.
 Closed movement tasks are relatively stereotyped, showing little variation, and they are
performed in relatively fixed or predictable environment.

Environmental constraints on movement

 Regulatory: Examples of regulatory features of the environment include the size, shape and
weight of a cup to be picked up and the type of surface.
 Non-regulatory: Background noise and the presence of distractions.
 Features of the environment can enable or disable the task performance.

Cognition

Cognitive processes are essential to motor control. They include:

 Intent
 Planning
 Problem solving
 Attention
 Motivation
 Emotional aspects

Perception

 Perception is the integration of sensory impressions into meaningful information

 Includes both peripheral sensory mechanisms and higher-level processing that adds
interpretation and meaning to incoming afferent information.
  Provide information about the state of the body and environment critical to the regulation of
movement.

Movement initiation

 Recall Newtons first law

 Movement in human body can be initiated by internally generated force or external forces

Neural control of movement

Structures involved

 Sensory perceptual areas

o Mainly somatosensory cortex
 Limbic system, prefrontal cortex
 Premotor cortex, motor cortex
 Cerebellum
 Basal ganglia
 Pyramidal and extrapyramidal tracts
 Spinal circuits and reflexes
 Sensory tracts

Types of neurons

 Sensory neuron
 Motor neuron
 Interneuron
 Schwann cell