Grant: Operating Grant

When our arm or hand is perturbed by an external force or obstacle while making a movement, the brain possesses mechanisms that rapidly detect the error and make a corrective adjustment to complete the movement as originally intended. This is called feedback control. If the same perturbation is encountered many times, the brain gradually learns to anticipate the effect of the perturbation and adjusts the motor command to reduce its effect. This is called predictive or feedforward control, and the learning process is called adaptation. Similarly, when we try to learn a new motor skill, we make many mistakes at first but gradually reduce the errors as our skill improves. In both adaptation and motor learning, the errors sensed during the initial feedback error-correction phase are used to modify the neural circuits responsible for the planning and execution of movements. As the circuits are modified and errors are reduced, the motor system gradually functions more and more in predictive feedforward mode. This project investigates the neural mechanisms in the motor cortex and parietal cortex that are believed to play a critical role in the detection and correction of errors during feedback control while learning a skill, and how their activity changes to permit feedforward control during skilled performance.