Mathematical models of human motor coordination #

John Hogan

10:30 Tuesday in 4Q04.

Part of the Complex systems and control session.

Abstract #

Human motor coordination is the combination of body movements that results in intended actions. It involves the integration of proprioceptive information and neural processes to control actions. Any action has a huge number of degrees of freedom. How does the nervous system determine the solution, from a large set of possible solutions, that can accomplish the task equally well? From a mathematical modelling perspective, the questions are: What to model? How to model it? In his celebrated experiment, Kelso (1984) asked subjects to oscillate their index fingers in an anti-phase pattern, following the pace determined by a metronome. Once the metronome frequency was increased, an involuntary switch to an in-phase pattern was observed. This contribution will contrast two models that have been proposed to explain this phenomenon and suggests that despite all the research in the intervening years, we are still not at the point where the modelling human motor coordination is well-understood.