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Using kinematic data to identify movement patterns shared between tasks: A way to explain transfer

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In motor training, transfer is defined as the gain/loss of performance in one task as a result of training on another. In our laboratory, we have observed that training on a multi-joint coordination task (which simulates arm and wrist movement when feeding) transfers to a dexterity task (which simulates finger…

In motor training, transfer is defined as the gain/loss of performance in one task as a result of training on another. In our laboratory, we have observed that training on a multi-joint coordination task (which simulates arm and wrist movement when feeding) transfers to a dexterity task (which simulates finger and hand movement when dressing), such that there are improvements in the dexterity task that emerge without having trained on that specific task. More recently, we have shown that the dexterity task transfers to the multi-joint coordination task. These collective findings suggest that there are shared movement patterns between these two functional motor tasks that may yield this bi-directional transfer effect. Therefore, the objective of this thesis project was to collect kinematic data of the hand to use in future principal component analyses to better understand the underlying mechanism of transfer between these two functional motor tasks. The joint angles of the hand were recorded during twenty second trials of the multi-joint coordination task and the dexterity task. The ranges of motion for the joints in the hand during naïve performance of both motor tasks were analyzed. From a linear regression analysis, we observe that the hand’s ranges of motion were strongly correlated between the two tasks, which suggests that these two functionally different tasks may share movement patterns in terms of joint angles. This similarity of joint angles of the hand may play a role in why we observe this bi-directional transfer between the dexterity and multi-joint coordination tasks. Following neurological injury, patients participate in physical therapy in order to retrain their nervous system to restore lost motor function(s). If patients can only practice a limited number of activities in therapy, our data suggest that other activities may also improve through transfer of training. Kinematic data collection may inform how much a patient improves with motor training and why there may be an improvement in untrained motor tasks.
ContributorsConnor, Sydney Christine (Author) / Schaefer, Sydney (Thesis director) / Peterson, Daniel (Committee member) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12