Cognitive: Motor control and Action

Question 1

What is included in the motor system?

Answer 1

Components of the central and peripheral nervous systems along with the muscles joints and bones that enable movement.

Question 2

What did Woodworth’s study set to prove and what did it require of the participant?

Answer 2

That there are different stages to motor control and participants had to slide a pencil back and forth between targets.

Question 3

What did the data from Woodworth’s study reveal?

Answer 3

Movement between targets could be described with a two-component process of motor control. The impulse phase initiated the movement and was planned in advance of the start of the movement and this plan would be sent from the brain to the body in the form of a motor command. In the control phase vision was key to controlling the accuracy of the final endpoint position.

Question 4

What is the motor control problem?

Answer 4

How to get the body from one posture to another.

Question 5

What is meant by the degrees of freedom of a joint?

Answer 5

The degrees of freedom of a joint are the number of ways it can move.

Question 6

What is the degrees of freedom problem?

Answer 6

The structure of joints and muscles in the body provide a redundant system, when performing a task the joints do not need to all move in all ways. (elevator button)

Question 7

What is meant by the inverse problem of vision

Answer 7

When there are more than on interpretation of the 3d world given the 2D image information.

Question 8

What is the Equilibrium point hypothesis?

Answer 8

A theory of motor control that emphasizes how the problem of control can be simplified by taking into account muscle properties

Question 9

Where does the equilibrium point hypothesis place emphasis

Answer 9

The special relationship between the brain and the muscles

Question 10

Given an alternative name for this type of model, why is this?

Answer 10

Mass spring model because it reflects the intuition that the amount of force our muscles can exert depends on how much they are stretched.

Question 11

What does any stable posture require according the the equilibrium point hypothesis?

Answer 11

The setting of various control parameters for muscle activation to achieve stability.

Question 12

What criticisms has the EP hypothesis faced?

Answer 12

It is only suitable for certain ranges of movements and muscle properties.

Question 13

What is meant by the dynamic systems hypothesis

Answer 13

An approach to motor control which emphasizes interaction between the body and environment and uses special mathematics that describe how a system’s behaviour changes over time.

Question 14

Give two examples of state transitions

Answer 14

Walking and running are distinct motor patterns and there isn’t an inbetween state. When we move two limbs together there is a tendency for them to exhibit mirror symmetric movements. (fingers)

Question 15

What strengths tie these two theories together?

Answer 15

Makes clear the brain can simplify its planning by knowledge of the body and has likely been driven to particular solutions through interactions with the environment.

Question 16

What is meant by the optimal control theory?

Answer 16

It provides a framework for implementing principles that produce movements that optimally satisfy some criterion. It views motor control as the evolutionary or developmental result of a nervous system that tries to optimize organisational principles.

Question 17

What is the function of a forward model?

Answer 17

Predicting the relationship between between actions and their consequences.

Question 18

Describe in detail the optimal control theory cycle

Answer 18

First the control policy takes as input the current state estimate and outputs a motor command. It provides a set of rules that determines what to do given a particular goal and state estimate. The motor command contains information about how the body is supposed to move. Physiological noise is introduced into the motor command due to imperfect neural transmission along the pathway from brain to body. The forward model then takes as input the motor command and outputs a prediction of the sensory consequences of the motor command. The body then takes as input the motor command that has been degraded by noise and produces an action that changes the state of the body and typically also the world; this creates new sensory information.This sensory information is also corrupted by noise arising from imperfect sensing and neural transmission. This noise will lead to uncertainty in estimating the state of the body and the world. Sensory integration then takes as input all the sensory information as well as the prediction of the forward model and outputs an estimate of the current state of the system which provides an internal representation of the current state of the body and world and is input to the control policy.

Question 19

What makes the optimal control theory ideal for cognitive psychology?

Answer 19

It heavily influenced by the forward model and the reliability of sensory information rather than physiology or the relationship between an organism and the environment.

Question 20

What brain areas align with the aspects of functions of the Control policy, Forward model and sensory information?

Answer 20

Control policy- basal ganglia
Forward model- Cerebellum
Sensory integration- parietal cortex

Question 21

What was Wolbert’s hypothesis of his experiment

Answer 21

We reliably underestimate the forces we produce.

Question 22

What was the procedure of Wolbert’s experiment

Answer 22

There were three conditions. In the first there were 6 pairs of participants. A small torque motor applied a small amount of pressure to the left index finger of one participant. Participants then took turns attempting to mimic the pairs force using their right index finger to push their pair’s left. In the second condition they had to match it by pushing against their right index finger. In the third they had to manipulate a joystick that controlled the amount of force applied to the left index finger.

Question 23

What were the results of Wolbert’s experiment?

Answer 23

1st condition: Force went up38% per turn

In the second participants consistently used more force. The third condition was much more accurate.

Question 24

Why may schizophrenic be better at scaling the pressure they’re applying.

Answer 24

They often think the actions they’re performing are of alien origin therefore they do not treat these actions as their own and do not treat them different.

Question 25

What does Wolbert’s experiment show about the function of the forward model?

Answer 25

It could diminish the effects of our own actions as a means to aid our sensory system in separating the effects of ourselves from the effects of the world.

Question 26

What is meant by associative chain theory?

Answer 26

A behaviourist theory that explains how sequences of actions arise from linking together associations between individual action components.

Question 27

Any further cards are terms

Answer 27

ok

Question 28

What is meant by parallel processing?

Answer 28

The ability to divide the process of solving a problem into multiple parts and to work simultaneously on each part.

Question 29

What is meant by recurrent networks?

Answer 29

A type of artificial neural network with connections between units arranged so to obtain a cycle of activation. This allows for temporal context.

Question 30

What is meant by interactive activation?

Answer 30

The pattern of network activity generated by excitatory and inhibitory interactions of feature detectors and object representations.

Question 31

What is meant by apraxia?

Answer 31

Neurological condition typically resulting from brain damage where a person loses the ability to perform actions that they are physically able and willing to do

Question 32

What is meant by the term cognitive sandwich?

Answer 32

Describes the view that perception and action are like slices of bread that surround cognition as the filling of a sandwich.

Question 33

What is meant by ideomotor theory?

Answer 33

How thinking about the results of an action can give rise to producing an action

Question 34

What is meant by common coding?

Answer 34

A theory of perception and action production which holds that both production and perception share certain representations of actions in the world

Question 35

What is meant by homologous in biology?

Answer 35

To have the corresponding position, structure and possibly function

Question 36

What are motor primitives?

Answer 36

The basis set of elemental movements that serve as building blocks for an animals repertoire of movements