Behavioral studies of dynamical control policies underlying human reaching movements
(2022)
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- Abstract
- Most of our interactions with the world occur through reaching movements. These movements were extensively studied in the past decades and revealed rich mechanisms both during planning and execution. Despite these numerous years of research, very little is known about the entanglement between the planning and execution facets of reaching movements. This thesis explores the interactions between the planning and execution steps of these reaching movements through a combination of experimental and modeling approaches. First, we demonstrate that the control policies selected to execute movements are not immutable and can be adjusted online to accommodate changes in task demands. These online adjustments suggest the existence of a mechanism whereby changes in the task could elicit replanning of movement. Elaborating on this first finding, we then report that this adjustment can also handle dynamical changes in the task. This finding reinforces the first one as it demonstrates that this adjustment mechanism consists in a continuous feedback loop monitoring task demands to optimally adjust the control policy online. Then, we reveal that selecting more robust control policy, intended at rejecting potential disturbances, reduces flexibility during movement. This last result demonstrates a competition between movement vigor and flexibility. This work adds to the understanding of the control policies underlying reaching movements by providing new insights into the interactions between movement planning and execution. These results, combined with the modeling work, highlight the fact that movement planning and execution are
- Affiliations
UCLouvain SST/ICTM/INMA - Pôle en ingénierie mathématique UCLouvain SSS/IONS/COSY - Systems & cognitive Neuroscience
Citations
De Comite, A. (2022). Behavioral studies of dynamical control policies underlying human reaching movements. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/233555