Journal article
Twitching in Sensorimotor Development from Sleeping Rats to Robots
Current biology, Vol.23(12), pp.R532-R537
06/17/2013
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.04.075
PMCID: PMC3709969
PMID: 23787051
Abstract
It is still not known how the “rudimentary” movements of fetuses and infants are transformed into the coordinated, flexible, and adaptive movements of adults. In addressing this important issue, we consider a behavior that has been perennially viewed as a functionless by-product of a dreaming brain: the jerky limb movements called myoclonic twitches. Recent work has identified the neural mechanisms that produce twitching as well as those that convey sensory feedback from twitching limbs to the spinal cord and brain. In turn, these mechanistic insights have helped inspire new ideas about the functional roles that twitching might play in the self-organization of spinal and supraspinal sensorimotor circuits. Striking support for these ideas is coming from the field of developmental robotics: When twitches are mimicked in robot models of the musculoskeletal system, basic neural circuitry self-organizes. Mutually inspired biological and synthetic approaches promise not only to produce better robots, but also to solve fundamental problems concerning the developmental origins of sensorimotor maps in the spinal cord and brain.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Twitching in Sensorimotor Development from Sleeping Rats to Robots
- Creators
- Mark S Blumberg - Departments of Psychology and Biology, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242 USAHugo Gravato Marques - AI Lab, Institute for Neuroinformatics, University of Zurich 8050, SwitzerlandFumiya Iida - BIRL, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, ETH, Zurich 8092, Switzerland
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Current biology, Vol.23(12), pp.R532-R537
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.cub.2013.04.075
- PMID
- 23787051
- PMCID
- PMC3709969
- ISSN
- 0960-9822
- eISSN
- 1879-0445
- Grant note
- R01 HD063071 || HD / National Institute of Child Health & Human Development : NICHD K02 MH066424 || MH / National Institute of Mental Health : NIMH
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 06/17/2013
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences; Iowa Neuroscience Institute; Biology
- Record Identifier
- 9984070148702771
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