Contribution of the Cerebellum to Predictive Motor Control and Its Evaluation in Ataxic Patients

Goal-directed movements are predictive and multimodal in nature, especially for moving targets. For instance, during a reaching movement for a moving target, humans need to predict both motion of the target and movement of the limb. Recent computational studies show that the cerebellum predicts current and future states of the body and its environment using internal forward models. Sensory feedback signals from the periphery have delays in reaching the central nervous system, ranging between tens to hundreds of milliseconds. It is well known in engineering that feedback control based on time-delayed inputs can result in oscillatory and often unstable movements. In contrast, the brain predicts a current state from a previous state using forward models. This predictive mechanism most likely underpins stable and dexterous control of reaching movements. Although the cerebro-cerebellum has long been suggested as loci of various forward models, few methods are available to evaluate accuracy of the forward models in patients with cerebellar ataxia. Recently, we developed a non-invasive method to analyze receipt of motor commands in terms of movement kinematics for the wrist joint (Br/Kr ratio). In the present study, we have identified two components (F1 and F2) of the smooth pursuit movement. We found that the two components were in different control modes with different Br/Kr ratios. The major F1 component in a lower frequency range encodes both velocity and position of the moving ...

Source: Frontiers in Human Neuroscience - June 25, 2019 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research