Modulating the Structure of Motor Variability for Skill Learning Through Specific Muscle Synergies in Elderlies and Young Adults.

Motor variability - performance variations across task repetitions - has been assumed to be undesirable. But recent studies argue that variability facilitates early motor learning by allowing exploratory search of reward-generating motion, and that variability's structure may be modulated by neural circuits for furthering learning. What are the neural sources of learning-relevant motor variability and its modulation in humans of different ages? Elderlies and young adults played a 3-session virtual bowling while multi-muscle electromyographic signals were collected.