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Motor Control Based on the Internal Representation System on the Earth and in Space

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Abstract

In 2020, Inesa Benediktovna Kozlovskaya and Viktor Semenovich Gurfinkel passed away. Their scientific legacy is enormous and will be used repeatedly by researchers in various fields of physiology. The review considers Gurfinkel’ studies focusing on the function of the sensorimotor system on the ground and in microgravity. The studies prompted a review of many previous ideas about the organization of motor control, led to the development of new concepts, and allowed a look at the established positions from a new perspective. Gurfinkel formulated and experimentally verified the idea that the brain forms internal models of its body and environment. This system of internal representation provides for interpretation of sensory signals and modification of the motor responses that the signals elicit. Gurfinkel and colleagues showed additionally that adaptation of sensorimotor systems to weightlessness fundamentally differs from adaptation of other systems, primarily in that the main changes occur at the level of information processes in the internal representation system.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project no. 18-015-00222).

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  1. Kharkevich Institute of Information Transmission Problems, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

    Yu. S. Levik

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Correspondence to Yu. S. Levik.

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Translated by T. Tkacheva

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Levik, Y.S. Motor Control Based on the Internal Representation System on the Earth and in Space. Hum Physiol 47, 335–351 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0362119721030099

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