Katharina Buczek
Some of the most simple-seeming motor skills– including walking, kicking, and lifting up an item– are incredibly complex for humans to perform.
Even swallowing just one bite of food requires the coordination of over fifty pairs of muscles.
Still, scientists have relied on little information about how exactly humans learn and successfully perform these movements.
In turn, researchers from the University of Tsukuba in Japan have recently proposed a new motor learning model based on numerous theories to help further our understanding of brain processes.
Their study was published last month in Neural Networks and revealed that the proposed model could actually simulate humans’ motor learning quite accurately.
In making the model, the team first developed a mathematical algorithm to mimic the learning process that humans undergo when first performing new motor tasks.
The model was designed to imitate the numerous processes that are believed to occur when learning a skill.
Then, once satisfied with their model, the researchers tested it by simulating the results of three recently conducted motor skill studies in humans.
Professor Jun Izawa, the study’s senior author, explained how the model closely reflected the studies’ outcomes.
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