Abstract
It has recently been reported that the spatial orientation of two moving limbs has a determining influence on the relative accuracy and stability of coordination patterns. The purpose of the present experiments was to test perceptual and neuromuscular explanations of these spatial orientation effects. Experiment 1 was an initial test of the hypotheses and an extension of a previous study [Lee et al. (2002) Exp Brain Res 146:205–212] that required participants to coordinate inphase and antiphase movement patterns in four spatial orientations: two symmetric orientations (90° and 180° separation between the limbs) and two asymmetric orientations (90° and 135° separation between the limbs). Results of Experiment 1 suggest that the symmetry of movement may be a key factor influencing spatial orientation effects observed during interlimb coordination. In Experiment 2, participants again performed inphase and antiphase movement patterns in symmetric and asymmetric spatial orientations. However, one-half of the participants in Experiment 2 were provided with mechanical constraints during the performance of the desired coordination patterns. The mechanical constraints provided postural support but did not influence the visual experience. Results showed that the addition of the postural support improved performance. These findings suggest that neuromuscular, and perhaps biomechanical, constraints contribute more to the influence of spatial orientation than visual–perceptual constraints.
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Notes
This assumption is based on the following logic: Lee et al. found inphase dominance at parallel-180°, but antiphase dominance at orthogonal-90°. These findings parallel the “matched” and “unmatched” conditions of the study by Carson et al. 2000), respectively. Given that Fuchs and Jirsa (2000) associated the “matched” and “unmatched” conditions with σ=0 and 1, respectively, we associated parallel-180° with σ=0 and orthogonal-90° with σ=1.
The incorporation of an “imperfection parameter” that acts as a general symmetry breaking term, as suggested by Amazeen et al. (1998), may be a worthwhile consideration. Within this imperfection term, it seems likely that a postural stability factor may act as a multiplicand which is dependent on the maximal amount of rotational and translational displacement of a body’s vertical axis for a given spatial orientation. Future consideration will be given to this issue.
It must be acknowledged here that we cannot say with certainty how the muscular synergies changed under the different postural manipulations. For example, we did not record muscle activity (EMG) from the trunk muscles to quantify differences in activation patterns across the spatial orientations nor did we probe the excitability of the specific motor pathways (e.g., Baldissera et al.1998; 2002; Carson et al. 1999; Carson and Riek 2002). Although such information would be extremely useful and will be sought in the future, we feel that it is not necessary for our interpretation of the results. Given that the postural support could only affect the size of the perturbations to the trunk, and subsequently the amount of work the trunk muscles would need to do to maintain an upright posture, the effort to maintain posture and work done by the trunk muscles was undoubtedly decreased. This could only point to a neuromuscular explanation.
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This research was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
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Each of the co-authors contributed equally to the development and completion of this project.
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Welsh, T.N., Almeida, Q.J. & Lee, T.D. The effect of postural stability and spatial orientation of the upper limbs on interlimb coordination. Exp Brain Res 161, 265–275 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-004-2062-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-004-2062-3