Changes in EEG alpha-band power during prehension indicates neural motor drive inhibition.

Changes in alpha band activity (8-12 Hz) indicate the downregulation of brain regions during cognitive tasks, reflecting real-time cognitive load. Despite this, its feasibility to be used in a more dynamic environment with ongoing motor corrections has not been studied. This research used electroencephalography (EEG) to explore how different brain regions are engaged during a simple grasp and lift task where unexpected changes to the object's weight or surface friction are introduced.

Sensory prediction error drives subconscious motor learning outside of the laboratory.

Sensorimotor adaptation is supported by at least two parallel learning systems: an intentionally controlled explicit strategy and an involuntary implicit learning system. Past work focused on constrained reaches or finger movements in laboratory environments has shown subconscious learning systems to be driven in part by sensory prediction error (SPE), i.e.

An analytical method reduces noise bias in motor adaptation analysis.

When a person makes a movement, a motor error is typically observed that then drives motor planning corrections on subsequent movements. This error correction, quantified as a trial-by-trial adaptation rate, provides insight into how the nervous system is operating, particularly regarding how much confidence a person places in different sources of information such as sensory feedback or motor command reproducibility. Traditional analysis has required carefully controlled laboratory conditions such as the application of perturbations or error clamping, limiting the usefulness of motor analysis in clinical and everyday environments.

Crossmodal congruency effect scores decrease with repeat test exposure.

The incorporation of feedback into a person's body schema is well established. The crossmodal congruency task (CCT) is used to objectively quantify incorporation without being susceptible to experimenter biases. This visual-tactile interference task is used to calculate the crossmodal congruency effect (CCE) score as a difference in response time between incongruent and congruent trials.

Conventional analysis of trial-by-trial adaptation is biased: Empirical and theoretical support using a Bayesian estimator.

Research on human motor adaptation has often focused on how people adapt to self-generated or externally-influenced errors. Trial-by-trial adaptation is a person's response to self-generated errors. Externally-influenced errors applied as catch-trial perturbations are used to calculate a person's perturbation adaptation rate.

Author Correction: Assessing the quality of supplementary sensory feedback using the crossmodal congruency task.

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has not been fixed in the paper.

Assessing the quality of supplementary sensory feedback using the crossmodal congruency task.

Advanced neural interfaces show promise in making prosthetic limbs more biomimetic and ultimately more intuitive and useful for patients. However, approaches to assess these emerging technologies are limited in scope and the insight they provide. When outfitting a prosthesis with a feedback system, such as a peripheral nerve interface, it would be helpful to quantify its physiological correspondence, i.

A third arm - Design of a bypass prosthesis enabling incorporation.

A variety of factors affect the performance of a person using a myoelectric prosthesis, including increased control noise, reduced sensory feedback, and muscle fatigue. Many studies use able-bodied subjects to control a myoelectric prosthesis using a bypass socket in order to make comparisons to movements made with intact limbs. Depending on the goals of the study, this approach can also allow for greater subject numbers and more statistical power in the analysis of the results.

Validation of a constrained-time movement task for use in rehabilitation outcome measures.

Current motor assessment tools can provide numerical indicators of performance but do not provide actionable information to target further improvement in rehabilitation interventions. Psychophysics-based outcome measures show promise to provide more useful information in the laboratory environment but have been limited in clinical implementation. Here we present a constrained-time task to assess paced and non-rhythmic movements.

Designing and implementing nervous system simulations on LEGO robots.

We present a method to use the commercially available LEGO Mindstorms NXT robotics platform to test systems level neuroscience hypotheses. The first step of the method is to develop a nervous system simulation of specific reflexive behaviors of an appropriate model organism; here we use the American Lobster. Exteroceptive reflexes mediated by decussating (crossing) neural connections can explain an animal's taxis towards or away from a stimulus as described by Braitenberg and are particularly well suited for investigation using the NXT platform.