High-fidelity musculoskeletal modeling reveals that motor planning variability contributes to the speed-accuracy tradeoff.

ABSTRACT: A long-standing challenge in motor neuroscience is to understand the relationship between movement speed and accuracy, known as the speed-accuracy tradeoff. Here, we introduce a biomechanically realistic computational model of three-dimensional upper extremity movements that reproduces well-known features of reaching movements. This model revealed that the speed-accuracy tradeoff, as described by Fitts' law, emerges even without the presence of motor noise, which is commonly believed to underlie the speed-accuracy tradeoff. Next, we analyzed motor cortical neural activity from monkeys reaching to targets of different sizes. We found that the contribution of preparatory neural activity to movement duration (MD) variability is greater for smaller targets than larger targets, and that movemen

SUBMITTER: Al Borno M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7787661 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature