Tuesday July 26th, 2022 - 11.45 am
Prof. Daniele Piscitelli
Motor Control: Applications in Neurorehabilitation
Stroke is a leading cause of long-term motor disability worldwide. The most common sensorimotor disorders are spasticity and disrupted muscle activation leading to residual functional deficit. Notably, significant changes in the structure of movement variability have been reported in neurological populations compared to healthy subjects, resulting in loss of movement stability.
A unified framework that couples motor control processes and movement disorders has been proposed within the theory of Referent Control (RC) of action and perception. According to the RC theory, movement emerges according to the difference between the actual body position and the referent body position. The family of endpoint trajectories observed during movement repetition resulting from the intertrial variability of the degrees of freedom contributing to the movement can be characterized with the Uncontrolled Manifold (UCM) analysis. The UCM is based on the hypothesis that the central nervous system is able to organize different sets of elements within the body (e.g., muscles, joints) into task-specific ensembles (i.e., synergies), stabilizing salient performance variables. Understanding the relationship between control processes and movement variability may be important for developing personalized clinical approaches based on the individual’s specific sensorimotor impairment. The potential implications and future directions will be discussed.