Motor Learning Flashcards
Motor Control Definition
Production of purposeful movements is mediated by reflexes and executive faculties, depending on the integrated function of all the major parts of the CNS.
Movement cannot be interpreted or modified without considering mental processes of sensory acquisition (the learning or developing of a skill, habit, or quality), perception, motivation and decision.
Main Aspects of Motor Control
- Purposeful movements (not only voluntary)
- Complete a task (effective)
- Spend the least amount of energy possible (economic)
- Maintain the center of gravity (safe)
Inhibitory Control Definition
All mental processes responsible for intentional and voluntary movement control, involving the ability to ignore irrelevant information and disregard relevant memories that would not play a role in solving a specific and immediate problem.
Main Aspects of Inhibitory Control
- Attention
- Behavior
- Internal processes (thoughts and emotions)
- External aspects (distractors)
Attention and Input Acquisition
Thalamic activity influences the quantity and quality of input being passed on to primary sensory areas, impacting perception of environment and self.
Focus of attention can interfere with a motor task involving precision.
Spatial Orientation/Reasoning
Maintaining spatial stability, despite changes in environment, eye movements and body position, is responsible for successful interaction between individual and environment.
Training of spatial orientation improves the motor speed level and skill performance level.
Perceptual-Motor Faculties
Perceptual-motor faculties is the Ability to combine different sources of sensory information, mostly visual, to modulate behavior.
Visual Feedback
Visual feedback is necessary to detect errors in performance relative to the target. These errors serve as information to revise the motor plan and improve performance of subsequent trials.
Visual Capture
Tendency to allow images to overlap other sensory inputs in perception.
Learning in adults vs. children
Less complex processing is needed to be able to adapt a motor skill to a new/different environment in adults compared to children.
This possibly reflects the effect of experience and cognitive flexibility. Learning in adults seems to be strongly related to association of pre-learned procedures.
Action Observation Network and Development
Action observation tasks activate a similar network to adults observing movement.
Action observation network in children presents a bilateral configuration, while adults present a lateralization of this network to the left-brain hemisphere.
What are processes of decision making based on?
- Experience
- “Search for reward” mechanism
- Perception of self
- Perception of environment
Experience and Movement
Memory is important for learning and improvement of performance.
Motor expertise is able to enhance neural flexibility and allows better adaptation of the cognitive control demanded for a task.
Online Modulation and Adaption
The adaption of a movement or part of the motor plan, during the execution of the motor procedure, as a response to an unexpected change in environment, task or body structure/function.
Aspects Influencing Decision Making Processes
- Motor Control
- Inhibitory Control
- Attention and Input Acquisition
- Spatial Orientation and Spatial Reasoning
- Perceptual-Motor Faculties
- Visual Feedback
- Action Observation Network and Development
Learning
Learning is the Adaptation process of gaining or modifying information in cortical (and subcortical) areas, changing structure and function, in order to enhance the effectivness in daily life activity.
Unconscious and Unskilled (Learning)
Unaware of the lack of skill
Conscious and Unskilled (Learning)
Awareness of lack of skill
Conscious and skilled (Learning)
Skill reproduction under high processing.
Preconscious and Skilled (Learning)
Skill reproduction with less processing needed.
Dyspraxia
Liepmann
Disturbance on one of two phases involved in the production of voluntary movements:
Phase 1: Creation of a mental image
Phase 2: Transduction into appropriate motor commands
Stages in Learning
- Cognitive stage
- Associative stage
- Autonomous stage
Cognitive stage
Development of a general understanding of the skill to be learned.
Associative Stage
The transition from “what to do” to “how to do it”. This stage is reached when an individual can identify various possible events that could appear during the performance of a movement (anticipation). The skill is performed with significantly less cognitive load.
Autonomous Stage
The skill becomes more automatic, requiring very little processing and being able to be performed in any setting.
Motor Learning in Treatment Concepts
- Top-down Methods
- Bottom-up Methods
Top-down Methods
- Problem solving strategies are developed by the patient, without being confronted with a solution/desired motor behavior.
- Assistance is given as needed, mostly during the performance, but not during the planification of the activity.
- Suitable for cases where sensorimotor control deficits impair movements, or a skill requires improvement.
Bottom-up Methods
- Movements are being guided in repetitive training of specific actions, mostly regarding ADLs (Activities of daily living).
- require more time to establish and will lack in adaptability.
- creation of a mental picture of the activity or the translation into movement is impaired.
Associative Learning
Refers to forms of conditioning.
- Classical conditioning
- Operant conditioning
Classical Conditioning
Individual is trained to recognize stimuli that often occur simultaneously or sequentially, leading to a specific response.
Operant Conditioning
Reinforcement and punishment can both be used to sculpt an individuals behavior. In this way, reinforced behavioral patterns can persist/develop, while not nourished ones die out over time, since ineffective strategies tend to have their connections inside brain networks disrupted.
Jean Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
- Sensorimotor (0-24M)
- Preoperational (2Y-7Y)
- Concrete operational (7Y-12Y)
- Formal operational (12Y+)