Bodily awareness during skilled action

Prominent theories of skill acquisition posit that the performing body is absent during ‘habitualized’ or well-learned action. This chapter challenges this position by arguing that the body is never forgotten during skilled movement. Instead, it possesses what might be termed an enduring presence. Drawing on Colombetti’s (2011) taxonomy of the bodily self, the chapter shows how skilled performers may experience either a reflective or pre-reflective mode of bodily awareness depending on what they attend to during online skill execution. It proposes that while the body is always lived through as the subject of experience, performers will often have little choice but to take the body as the intentional object of their awareness. The chapter concludes by arguing that it is the dynamic interplay of various forms of bodily awareness that facilitates optimal performance and allows skilled performers to confront the challenges (e.g. injury, performance slumps) that are a ubiquitous feature of competitive environments.

Recognition capability of one’s own skilled movement is dissociated from acquisition of motor skill memory

When we have rehearsed a movement using an object, we can reproduce the movement without holding the object. However, the reproduced movement sometimes differs from the movement holding a real object, likely because movement recognition is inaccurate. In the present study, we tested whether the recognition capability was dissociated from the acquisition of motor skill memory. Twelve novices were asked to rotate two balls with their right hand as quickly as possible; they practiced the task for 29 days. To evaluate recognition capability, we calculated the difference in coordination pattern of all five digits between the ball-rotation movement and the reproduced movement without holding balls. The recognition capability did not change within the first day, but improved after one week of practice. On the other hand, performance of the ball rotation significantly improved within the first day. Since improvement of performance is likely associated with acquisition of motor skill memory, we suggest that recognition capability, which reflects the capability to cognitively access motor skill memory, was dissociated from the acquisition of motor skill memory. Therefore, recognition of one’s own skilled movement would rely on a hierarchical structure of acquisition of motor skill memory and cognitive access to that memory.

The role of feedback in the production of skilled finger sequences

Actions involving fine control of the hand, for example grasping an object, rely heavily on sensory information from the fingertips. While the integration of feedback during execution of individual movements is well understood, less is known about the use of sensory feedback in the control of skilled movement sequences. To address this gap, we trained participants to produce sequences of finger movements on a keyboard-like device over a four-day training period. Participants received haptic, visual, and auditory feedback indicating the occurrence of each finger press. We then either transiently delayed or advanced the feedback for a single press by a small amount of time (30 or 60 ms). We observed that participants rapidly adjusted their ongoing finger press by either accelerating or prolonging the ongoing press, in accordance with the direction of the perturbation. Furthermore, we could show that this rapid behavioural modulation was driven by haptic feedback. While these feedback-driven adjustments reduced in size with practice, they were still clearly present at the end of training. In contrast to the directionally-specific effect we observed on the perturbed press, a feedback perturbation resulted in a delayed onset of the subsequent presses irrespective of perturbation direction or feedback modality. This observation is consistent with a hierarchical organization of skilled movement sequences, with different levels reacting distinctly to sensory perturbations.

Corticospinal vs Rubrospinal Revisited: An Evolutionary Perspective for Sensorimotor Integration

The knowledge about how different subsystems participate and interplay in sensorimotor control is fundamental to understand motor deficits associated with CNS injury and movement recovery. The role of corticospinal (CS) and rubrospinal (RS) projections in motor control has been extensively studied and compared, and it is clear that both systems are important for skilled movement. However, during phylogeny, the emerging cerebral cortex took a higher hierarchical role controlling rubro-cerebellar circuits. Here, we present anatomical, neurophysiological, and behavioral evidence suggesting that both systems modulate complex segmental neuronal networks in a parallel way, which is important for sensorimotor integration at spinal cord level. We also highlight that, although specializations exist, both systems could be complementary and potentially subserve motor recovery associated with CNS damage.

Components of complex movement that can be best studied using the sequence learning paradigm

The sequence learning paradigm has been used extensively to study motor skill acquisition. Skilled movement involves combining smaller elements of the movement in a particular order with certain timing; in sequence learning these are typically button presses, but other motor skills may include more complex elements. This paper reviews recent evidence suggesting the sequence learning paradigm can be used to understand how the brain abstractly represents the ordering of discrete actions in a complex movement.