title: The motor system plays the violin: a musical metaphor inferred from the oscillatory activity of the α-motoneuron pools during locomotion.
abstract: Despite substantial advances in the field, particularly resulting from physiological studies in animals, the neural mechanisms underlying the generation of many motor behaviors in humans remain unclear. A recent study (Cappellini G et al. J Neurophysiol 104: 3064-3073, 2010) sheds more light on this topic. Like the string of a violin, the α-motoneuron pools in the spinal cord during locomotion show continuous and oscillatory patterns of activation. In this report, the implications and relevance of this finding are discussed in a general framework that includes neurophysiology, optimal control theory, and robotics.
authors.affiliation: Section for Computational Sensomotorics, Department of Cognitive Neurology, Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, Frondsbergstrasse 23, 72070 Tübingen, Germany. enrico.chiovetto@klinikum.uni-tuebingen.de
authors.forename: Enrico
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Chiovetto
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D004576:Electromyography; D006801:Humans; D008124:Locomotion / Q000502:physiology*; D019365:Metaphor; D023421:Models, Animal; D009043:Motor Activity / Q000502:physiology; D009046:Motor Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D009146:Music; D013116:Spinal Cord / Q000502:physiology*