Search results for "Body movement"
showing 10 items of 74 documents
Kinematic features of movement tunes perception and action coupling
2005
How do we extrapolate the final position of hand trajectory that suddenly vanishes behind a wall? Studies showing maintenance of cortical activity after objects in motion disappear suggest that internal model of action may be recalled to reconstruct the missing part of the trajectory. Although supported by neurophysiological and brain imaging studies, behavioural evidence for this hypothesis is sparse. Further, in humans, it is unknown if the recall of internal model of action at motion observation can be tuned with kinematic features of movement. Here, we propose a novel experiment to address this question. Each stimulus consisted of a dot moving either upwards or downwards, and correspond…
Differences in hand and foot psychomotor speed among 18 pairs of monozygotic twins discordant for lifelong vehicular driving.
1997
The purpose of this study was to examine driving as a determinant of hand and foot psychomotor reaction times. Visual simple and choice hand and foot psychomotor reaction times were measured. The occupational driving contrast was determined by an interview reviewing every job held during each subject's lifetime. Comparison was made of psychomotor speed among 18 pairs of 39- to 62-year-old monozygotic male twins discordant for lifelong occupational driving. The mean discordance was the equivalent of 16 years of full-time driving. The twins who drove more tended to have slower hand simple and choice reaction times, although only the difference in hand-choice decision time was statistically si…
Inertial properties of the arm are accurately predicted during motor imagery
2004
Abstract In the present study, using the mental chronometry paradigm, we examined the hypothesis that during motor imagery the brain uses a forward internal model of arm inertial properties to predict the motion of the arm in different dynamic states. Seven subjects performed overt and covert arm movements with one (motion around the shoulder joint) and two (motion around both the shoulder and elbow joints) degrees of freedom in the horizontal plane. Arm movements were executed under two loading conditions: without and with an added mass (4 kg) attached to the subject’s right wrist. Additionally, movements were performed in two different directions, condition which implies changes in the ar…
The role of anticipatory postural adjustments during whole body forward reaching movements
1998
THE purpose of this study was to examine the role of anticipatory postural adjustments (APAs) in the execution of forward oriented whole body reaching movements. From the standing position, eight healthy subjects were asked to reach an object placed at 45 cm from the feet, at both naturally paced and fast speeds. Electromyographic signals of six antagonistic muscles were analysed in conjunction with centre of mass (CM) displacements, centre of foot pressure displacements and resultant ground reaction forces. Results revealed that APAs created necessary angular momentum of body segments for effective task execution. These results suggest that APAs can initiate movements conducted from a fixe…
In vivo muscle mechanics during locomotion depend on movement amplitude and contraction intensity
2001
The effects of movement amplitude and contraction intensity on triceps surae and quadriceps femoris muscle function were studied during repetitive hopping. In vivo forces from Achilles and patellar tendons were recorded with the optic fibre technique from eight volunteers. The performances were filmed (200 Hz) to determine changes in muscle-tendon unit length and velocity. When hopping with a small amplitude (23 degrees knee flexion during the ground contact phase), the Achilles tendon was primarily loaded whereas patellar tendon forces were greater in large-amplitude hopping (56 degrees knee flexion). In spite of the different magnitudes of stretch in the quadriceps femoris muscle, the str…
Interaction between pre-landing activities and stiffness regulation of the knee joint musculoskeletal system in the drop jump: implications to perfor…
2002
The purpose of the present study was to investigate the interaction between the pre-landing activities and the stiffness regulation of the knee joint musculoskeletal system and the takeoff speed during a drop jump (DJ). Nine healthy male subjects performed a DJ test from the height of 50 cm. The surface electromyographic (EMG) activity of the vastus lateralis (VL) muscle was recorded to evaluate both the pre-landing and post-landing muscle activation levels. Simultaneous recording of the jumping motion and ground reaction force was performed by a high-speed video camera (100 frames x s(-1)), and a force platform was employed to allow joint moment analysis. Joint stiffness was calculated by …
On orienting the hand to reach and grasp an object.
1996
Subjects were required to reach and grasp a parallelepiped, the position, orientation and size of which were varied. The kinematics of reaching and grasping movements was studied in full vision and in no vision conditions. Both direction and movement amplitude of reaching were affected by object orientation. Conversely, both the time course of finger axis orientation and the angular displacement of the hand at wrist were influenced by object position. These results were not modified by the absence of visual control. Finger aperture during grasping was affected by both object size and orientation. This latter result was not due to a distorted size perception, as shown by a control matching e…
Phase-specific modulation of cortical motor output during movement observation.
2001
The effects of different phases of an observed movement on the modulation of cortical motor output were studied by means of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). A video-clip of a reaching-grasping action was shown and single TMS pulses were delivered during its passive observation, Times of cortical stimulation were related to the phases of the shown movement, locking them to the appearance of specific kinematic landmarks. The amplitude of the motor evoked potentials (MEPs) induced by TMS in the first dorsal interosseus (FDI) muscle was modulated by the amount of the observed finger aperture. The presence of such an effect is consistent with the notion of a mirror neuron system in premo…
Hand trajectory formation during whole body reaching movements in man.
1998
End-effector trajectory formation was studied during a reaching movement using the whole body. The movements of various parts of the body were measured with the optoelectronic ELITE system. Wrist reaching movement paths showed noticeable curvatures. The analysis of various marker onset latencies revealed that the wrist was the last to move, always after the head, knee or trunk, suggesting a subordinate role of the focal component with respect to the primary role of the equilibrium component. These results suggest that reaching wrist movements are subjected to whole-body equilibrium constraints in addition to constraints placed upon end-effector kinematics or the dynamic optimization of uppe…
Eye position tunes the contribution of allocentric and egocentric information to target localization in human goal-directed arm movements.
1997
Subjects were required to point to the distant vertex of the closed and the open configurations of the Muller-Lyer illusion using either their right hand (experiment 1) or their left hand (experiment 2). In both experiments the Muller-Lyer figures were horizontally presented either in the left or in the right hemispace and movements were executed using either foveal or peripheral vision of the target. According to the illusion effect, subjects undershot and overshot the vertex location of the closed and the open configuration, respectively. The illusion effect decreased when the target was fixated and when the stimulus was positioned in the right hemispace. These results confirm the hypothe…