scholarly journals Fast Hand Movements Unveil Multifractal Roots of Adaptation in the Visuomotor Cognitive System

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yvan Pratviel ◽  
Veronique Deschodt-Arsac ◽  
Florian Larrue ◽  
Laurent M. Arsac

Beyond apparent simplicity, visuomotor dexterity actually requires the coordination of multiple interactions across a complex system that links the brain, the body and the environment. Recent research suggests that a better understanding of how perceptive, cognitive and motor activities cohere to form executive control could be gained from multifractal formalisms applied to movement behavior. Rather than a central executive “talking” to encapsuled components, the multifractal intuition suggests that eye-hand coordination arises from multiplicative cascade dynamics across temporal scales of activity within the whole system, which is reflected in movement time series. Here we examined hand movements of sport students performing a visuomotor task in virtual reality (VR). The task involved hitting spatially arranged targets that lit up on a virtual board under critical time pressure. Three conditions were compared where the visual search field changed: whole board (Standard), half-board lower view field (LVF) and upper view field (UVF). Densely sampled (90 Hz) time series of hand motions captured by VR controllers were analyzed by a focus-based multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). Multiplicative rather than additive interactions across temporal scales were evidenced by testing comparatively phase-randomized surrogates of experimental series, which confirmed nonlinear processes. As main results, it was demonstrated that: (i) the degree of multifractality in hand motion behavior was minimal in LVF, a familiar visual search field where subjects correlatively reached their best visuomotor response times (RTs); (ii) multifractality increased in the less familiar UVF, but interestingly only for the non-dominant hand; and (iii) multifractality increased further in Standard, for both hands indifferently; in Standard, the maximal expansion of the visual search field imposed the highest demand as evidenced by the worst visuomotor RTs. Our observations advocate for visuomotor dexterity best described by multiplicative cascades dynamics and a system-wide distributed control rather than a central executive. More importantly, multifractal metrics obtained from hand movements behavior, beyond the confines of the brain, offer a window on the fine organization of control architecture, with high sensitivity to hand-related control behavior under specific constraints. Appealing applications may be found in movement learning/rehabilitation, e.g., in hemineglect people, stroke patients, maturing children or athletes.

2012 ◽  
Vol 107 (2) ◽  
pp. 544-550 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Squeri ◽  
Alessandra Sciutti ◽  
Monica Gori ◽  
Lorenzo Masia ◽  
Giulio Sandini ◽  
...  

Humans routinely use both of their hands to gather information about shape and texture of objects. Yet, the mechanisms of how the brain combines haptic information from the two hands to achieve a unified percept are unclear. This study systematically measured the haptic precision of humans exploring a virtual curved object contour with one or both hands to understand if the brain integrates haptic information from the two hemispheres. Bayesian perception theory predicts that redundant information from both hands should improve haptic estimates. Thus exploring an object with two hands should yield haptic precision that is superior to unimanual exploration. A bimanual robotic manipulandum passively moved the hands of 20 blindfolded, right-handed adult participants along virtual curved contours. Subjects indicated which contour was more “curved” (forced choice) between two stimuli of different curvature. Contours were explored uni- or bimanually at two orientations (toward or away from the body midline). Respective psychophysical discrimination thresholds were computed. First, subjects showed a tendency for one hand to be more sensitive than the other with most of the subjects exhibiting a left-hand bias. Second, bimanual thresholds were mostly within the range of the corresponding unimanual thresholds and were not predicted by a maximum-likelihood estimation (MLE) model. Third, bimanual curvature perception tended to be biased toward the motorically dominant hand, not toward the haptically more sensitive left hand. Two-handed exploration did not necessarily improve haptic sensitivity. We found no evidence that haptic information from both hands is integrated using a MLE mechanism. Rather, results are indicative of a process of “sensory selection”, where information from the dominant right hand is used, although the left, nondominant hand may yield more precise haptic estimates.


Bioimpacts ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 189-193
Author(s):  
Saeed Khamnei ◽  
Seyyed-Reza Sadat-Ebrahimi ◽  
Shaker Salarilak ◽  
Siavash Savadi Oskoee ◽  
Yousef Houshyar ◽  
...  

Introduction: Humans manifest a behavioral inclination towards more utility of one side of the body, in relation with the dominant hemisphere of the brain. The current investigation assessed handedness together with chewing preference which have not been evaluated in various food textures before. Methods: Nineteen young and healthy volunteers chewed hard (walnut) and soft (cake) foods, during surface electromyography recording from masseter muscles. The side of the first and all chews in the two food types were determined and compared with the side of the dominant hand. Results: Results indicated the two lateralities in the same side considerably (60%-70%), implying the solidarity in the control of the dominant hemisphere of the brain. The unilaterality was more prominent in the assessment of all chews in hard food, with higher statistical agreement and correlation. Conclusion: Thereupon masticatory preference is found with probable origins in the dominant hemisphere of the brain.


2017 ◽  
Vol 117 (1) ◽  
pp. 348-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sumitash Jana ◽  
Atul Gopal ◽  
Aditya Murthy

Eye and hand movements are initiated by anatomically separate regions in the brain, and yet these movements can be flexibly coupled and decoupled, depending on the need. The computational architecture that enables this flexible coupling of independent effectors is not understood. Here, we studied the computational architecture that enables flexible eye-hand coordination using a drift diffusion framework, which predicts that the variability of the reaction time (RT) distribution scales with its mean. We show that a common stochastic accumulator to threshold, followed by a noisy effector-dependent delay, explains eye-hand RT distributions and their correlation in a visual search task that required decision-making, while an interactive eye and hand accumulator model did not. In contrast, in an eye-hand dual task, an interactive model better predicted the observed correlations and RT distributions than a common accumulator model. Notably, these two models could only be distinguished on the basis of the variability and not the means of the predicted RT distributions. Additionally, signatures of separate initiation signals were also observed in a small fraction of trials in the visual search task, implying that these distinct computational architectures were not a manifestation of the task design per se. Taken together, our results suggest two unique computational architectures for eye-hand coordination, with task context biasing the brain toward instantiating one of the two architectures.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Previous studies on eye-hand coordination have considered mainly the means of eye and hand reaction time (RT) distributions. Here, we leverage the approximately linear relationship between the mean and standard deviation of RT distributions, as predicted by the drift-diffusion model, to propose the existence of two distinct computational architectures underlying coordinated eye-hand movements. These architectures, for the first time, provide a computational basis for the flexible coupling between eye and hand movements.


2017 ◽  
Vol 117 (6) ◽  
pp. 2250-2261 ◽  
Author(s):  
Romy S. Bakker ◽  
Roel H. A. Weijer ◽  
Robert J. van Beers ◽  
Luc P. J. Selen ◽  
W. Pieter Medendorp

In everyday life, we frequently have to decide which hand to use for a certain action. It has been suggested that for this decision the brain calculates expected costs based on action values, such as expected biomechanical costs, expected success rate, handedness, and skillfulness. Although these conclusions were based on experiments in stationary subjects, we often act while the body is in motion. We investigated how hand choice is affected by passive body motion, which directly affects the biomechanical costs of the arm movement due to its inertia. With the use of a linear motion platform, 12 right-handed subjects were sinusoidally translated (0.625 and 0.5 Hz). At 8 possible motion phases, they had to reach, using either their left or right hand, to a target presented at 1 of 11 possible locations. We predicted hand choice by calculating the expected biomechanical costs under different assumptions about the future acceleration involved in these computations, being the forthcoming acceleration during the reach, the instantaneous acceleration at target onset, or zero acceleration as if the body were stationary. Although hand choice was generally biased to use of the dominant hand, it also modulated sinusoidally with the motion, with the amplitude of the bias depending on the motion’s peak acceleration. The phase of hand choice modulation was consistent with the cost model that took the instantaneous acceleration signal at target onset. This suggests that the brain relies on the bottom-up acceleration signals, and not on predictions about future accelerations, when deciding on hand choice during passive whole body motion. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Decisions of hand choice are a fundamental aspect of human behavior. Whereas these decisions are typically studied in stationary subjects, this study examines hand choice while subjects are in motion. We show that accelerations of the body, which differentially modulate the biomechanical costs of left and right hand movements, are also taken into account when deciding which hand to use for a reach, possibly based on bottom-up processing of the otolith signal.


2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (82) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eurelija Venskaitytė ◽  
Jonas Poderys ◽  
Tadas Česnaitis

Research  background  and  hypothesis.  Traditional  time  series  analysis  techniques,  which  are  also  used  for the analysis of cardiovascular signals, do not reveal the relationship between the  changes in the indices recorded associated with the multiscale and chaotic structure of the tested object, which allows establishing short-and long-term structural and functional changes.Research aim was to reveal the dynamical peculiarities of interactions of cardiovascular system indices while evaluating the functional state of track-and-field athletes and Greco-Roman wrestlers.Research methods. Twenty two subjects participated in the study, their average age of 23.5 ± 1.7 years. During the study standard 12 lead electrocardiograms (ECG) were recorded. The following ECG parameters were used in the study: duration of RR interval taken from the II standard lead, duration of QRS complex, duration of JT interval and amplitude of ST segment taken from the V standard lead.Research  results.  Significant  differences  were  found  between  inter-parametric  connections  of  ST  segment amplitude and JT interval duration at the pre and post-training testing. Observed changes at different hierarchical levels of the body systems revealed inadequate cardiac metabolic processes, leading to changes in the metabolic rate of the myocardium and reflected in the dynamics of all investigated interactions.Discussion and conclusions. It has been found that peculiarities of the interactions of ECG indices interactions show the exposure of the  functional changes in the body at the onset of the workload. The alterations of the functional state of the body and the signs of fatigue, after athletes performed two high intensity training sessions per day, can be assessed using the approach of the evaluation of interactions between functional variables. Therefore the evaluation of the interactions of physiological signals by using time series analysis methods is suitable for the observation of these processes and the functional state of the body.Keywords: electrocardiogram, time series, functional state.


Author(s):  
M.P. Sutunkova ◽  
B.A. Katsnelson ◽  
L.I. Privalova ◽  
S.N. Solovjeva ◽  
V.B. Gurvich ◽  
...  

We conducted a comparative assessment of the nickel oxide nanoparticles toxicity (NiO) of two sizes (11 and 25 nm) according to a number of indicators of the body state after repeated intraperitoneal injections of these particles suspensions. At equal mass doses, NiO nanoparticles have been found to cause various manifestations of systemic subchronic toxicity with a particularly pronounced effect on liver, kidney function, the body’s antioxidant system, lipid metabolism, white and red blood, redox metabolism, spleen damage, and some disorders of nervous activity allegedly related to the possibility of nickel penetration into the brain from the blood. The relationship between the diameter and toxicity of particles is ambiguous, which may be due to differences in toxicokinetics, which is controlled by both physiological mechanisms and direct penetration of nanoparticles through biological barriers and, finally, unequal solubility.


Parasitology ◽  
1941 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 373-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gwendolen Rees

1. The structure of the proboscides of the larva of Dibothriorhynchus grossum (Rud.) is described. Each proboscis is provided with four sets of extrinsic muscles, and there is an anterior dorso-ventral muscle mass connected to all four proboscides.2. The musculature of the body and scolex is described.3. The nervous system consists of a brain, two lateral nerve cords, two outer and inner anterior nerves on each side, twenty-five pairs of bothridial nerves to each bothridium, four longitudinal bothridial nerves connecting these latter before their entry into the bothridia, four proboscis nerves arising from the brain, and a series of lateral nerves supplying the lateral regions of the body.4. The so-called ganglia contain no nerve cells, these are present only in the posterior median commissure which is therefore the nerve centre.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zakaria Djebbara ◽  
Lars Brorson Fich ◽  
Klaus Gramann

AbstractAction is a medium of collecting sensory information about the environment, which in turn is shaped by architectural affordances. Affordances characterize the fit between the physical structure of the body and capacities for movement and interaction with the environment, thus relying on sensorimotor processes associated with exploring the surroundings. Central to sensorimotor brain dynamics, the attentional mechanisms directing the gating function of sensory signals share neuronal resources with motor-related processes necessary to inferring the external causes of sensory signals. Such a predictive coding approach suggests that sensorimotor dynamics are sensitive to architectural affordances that support or suppress specific kinds of actions for an individual. However, how architectural affordances relate to the attentional mechanisms underlying the gating function for sensory signals remains unknown. Here we demonstrate that event-related desynchronization of alpha-band oscillations in parieto-occipital and medio-temporal regions covary with the architectural affordances. Source-level time–frequency analysis of data recorded in a motor-priming Mobile Brain/Body Imaging experiment revealed strong event-related desynchronization of the alpha band to originate from the posterior cingulate complex, the parahippocampal region as well as the occipital cortex. Our results firstly contribute to the understanding of how the brain resolves architectural affordances relevant to behaviour. Second, our results indicate that the alpha-band originating from the occipital cortex and parahippocampal region covaries with the architectural affordances before participants interact with the environment, whereas during the interaction, the posterior cingulate cortex and motor areas dynamically reflect the affordable behaviour. We conclude that the sensorimotor dynamics reflect behaviour-relevant features in the designed environment.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Linuo Wang

Injuries and hidden dangers in training have a greater impact on athletes ’careers. In particular, the brain function that controls the motor function area has a greater impact on the athlete ’s competitive ability. Based on this, it is necessary to adopt scientific methods to recognize brain functions. In this paper, we study the structure of motor brain-computer and improve it based on traditional methods. Moreover, supported by machine learning and SVM technology, this study uses a DSP filter to convert the preprocessed EEG signal X into a time series, and adjusts the distance between the time series to classify the data. In order to solve the inconsistency of DSP algorithms, a multi-layer joint learning framework based on logistic regression model is proposed, and a brain-machine interface system of sports based on machine learning and SVM is constructed. In addition, this study designed a control experiment to improve the performance of the method proposed by this study. The research results show that the method in this paper has a certain practical effect and can be applied to sports.


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