Motor Control and Motor Learning in Rehabilitation

Vocabulary flashcards covering fundamental concepts, theories, neuroanatomy, task analysis, and learning principles in motor control and neurorehabilitation.

Motor Control

The ability to regulate or direct the mechanisms essential to movement.

Motor Skills

Activities or tasks that require voluntary control over movements of the joints and body segments to achieve a goal.

Movement Emergence Model

The core motor control principle stating that movement emerges from the interaction of three primary factors: the individual, the task, and the environment.

Feedforward Control

The sending of signals in advance of movement to ready a part of the system for incoming sensory feedback or for a future motor command (such as Anticipatory Postural Adjustments).

Feedback Control

Response-produced sensory information received during or after movement that is used to monitor movement output for corrective actions (such as Reactive Postural Adjustments).

Perception

The integration of sensory impressions into psychologically meaningful information that provides state data about the body.

Regulatory Conditions

Features of the environmental context to which movements must conform if they are to achieve the action goal, regulating spatial and temporal movement aspects.

Nonregulatory Conditions

Features of the environmental context that have no influence or only an indirect influence on movement characteristics.

Intertrial Variability

An environmental characteristic in Gentile's taxonomy referring to whether the regulatory conditions associated with skill performance change or stay the same from one trial to the next.

Reflex Theory

A motor control theory formulated by Sherrington (1906) premised on movement being controlled by stimulus-response mechanisms and reflexes combining into complex behaviors.

Hierarchical Theories

Motor control theories associated with Adams (1971) stating that cortical centers control movement in a top-down manner throughout the nervous system.

Motor Program Theory

A theory proposed by Schmidt (1976) stating that adaptive, flexible motor programs (MPs) and generalized motor programs (GMPs) exist to store higher-level rules for action execution.

Systems Model

A motor control theory by Shumway-Cook (2007) asserting that multiple overlapping body systems activate synergies for movement production organized around functional goals.

Dynamical Systems Theory

A motor control theory (Bernstein, Turvey, Kelso & Tuller, Thelen) proposing that movement patterns self-organize within body and environmental constraints to solve the degrees-of-freedom problem.

Ecological Theories

Theories associated with Gibson & Pick (2000) stating that the interaction between person, task, and environment provides perceptual information and goal motivation used to control movement and learning.

Primitive Reflex

An involuntary, brainstem-mediated early automatic reflex present at or before birth that serves survival and early sensorimotor behavior, typically becoming integrated over development.

Righting Reaction

An automatic postural reaction emerging in infancy that functions to orient the head and body and restore alignment with gravity.

Equilibrium Reaction

An automatic balance reaction emerging in later infancy that uses direction- and task-specific multisegment responses to restore the center of mass over the base of support.

Decorticate Posturing

Abnormal posturing caused by a lesion located above the red nucleus, characterized by upper limb flexion (via rubrospinal pathway) and lower limb extension.

Decerebrate Posturing

Abnormal posturing caused by a lesion located below the red nucleus, characterized by extension in both upper and lower extremities due to dominant vestibulospinal tract activation.

Kinematics versus Kinetics

Kinematics describes body motion (position, velocity, joint angles) without regard for forces, while Kinetics analyzes physical forces and moments (joint torques, ground reaction forces) causing motion.

Degree of Freedom (DoF)

An independent variable (such as joint angle, segment motion, or muscle force timing) that can vary during movement.

Synergy (Motor Control)

A dimensionality reduction method wherein a group of muscles shows covarying activation levels to simplify control and alleviate the degrees-of-freedom problem.

Principle of Motor Abundance

Mark Latash's concept stating that having excess elemental variables in the body is beneficial, providing motor flexibility, adaptation, and task-variable stabilization.

Uncontrolled Manifold (UCM)

The set of combinations of elemental motor variables that preserve a chosen task outcome.

Self-Organization

The principle that stable coordination patterns emerge naturally from interactions among individual, task, and environmental constraints without central executive command.

Attractor Well

A dynamic model characterizing movement stability; deep wells represent highly stable, less flexible movement patterns, whereas shallow wells suggest unstable, variable patterns.

Generalized Motor Program (GMP)

An abstract motor program storing general rules for a class of movements, including event order, relative timing, overall force, and muscular patterns.

Motor Learning

A set of internal processes associated with practice or experience leading to relatively permanent changes in the capability for producing skilled action.

Performance

The temporary behavioral act of executing a motor skill at a specific time and situation, from which motor learning must be inferred.

Retention

The demonstrated capability of a learner to perform a motor skill over time following a period with no practice.

Neuroplasticity

The nervous system's capacity to modify its structure, connectivity, and function in response to injury, experience, and practice.