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Motor Skills
A motor skill is a function that involves specific movements of the body's muscles to perform a certain task. These tasks could include walking, running, or riding a bike. In order to perform this skill, the body's nervous system, muscles, and brain have to all work together. The goal of motor skill is to optimize the ability to perform the skill at the rate of success, precision, and to reduce the energy consumption required for performance. Performance is an act of executing a motor skill or task. Continuous practice of a specific motor skill will result in a greatly improved performance, which leads to Motor Learning. Motor learning is a relatively permanent change in the ability to perform a skill as a result of continuous practice or experience. Types of motor skills Motor skills are movements and actions of the muscles. There are two major groups of motor skills: *Gross motor skills – require the use of large muscle groups in our legs, torso, and arms to perform tasks such ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Skill
A skill is the learned ability to act with determined results with good execution often within a given amount of time, energy, or both. Skills can often be divided into domain-general and domain-specific skills. For example, in the domain of work, some general skills would include time management, teamwork and leadership, self-motivation and others, whereas domain-specific skills would be used only for a certain job. Skill usually requires certain environmental stimuli and situations to assess the level of skill being shown and used. A skill may be called an art when it represents a body of knowledge or branch of learning, as in ''the art of medicine'' or ''the art of war''. Although the arts are also skills, there are many skills that form an art but have no connection to the fine arts. People need a broad range of skills to contribute to the modern economy. A joint ASTD and U.S. Department of Labor study showed that through technology, the workplace is changing, and ident ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Basal Ganglia
The basal ganglia (BG), or basal nuclei, are a group of subcortical nuclei, of varied origin, in the brains of vertebrates. In humans, and some primates, there are some differences, mainly in the division of the globus pallidus into an external and internal region, and in the division of the striatum. The basal ganglia are situated at the base of the forebrain and top of the midbrain. Basal ganglia are strongly interconnected with the cerebral cortex, thalamus, and brainstem, as well as several other brain areas. The basal ganglia are associated with a variety of functions, including control of voluntary motor movements, procedural learning, habit learning, conditional learning, eye movements, cognition, and emotion. The main components of the basal ganglia – as defined functionally – are the striatum, consisting of both the dorsal striatum ( caudate nucleus and putamen) and the ventral striatum ( nucleus accumbens and olfactory tubercle), the globus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sensorimotor Stage
Piaget's theory of cognitive development is a comprehensive theory about the nature and development of human intelligence. It was originated by the Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (1896–1980). The theory deals with the nature of knowledge itself and how humans gradually come to acquire, construct, and use it. Piaget's theory is mainly known as a developmental stage theory. In 1919, while working at the Alfred Binet Laboratory School in Paris, Piaget "was intrigued by the fact that children of different ages made different kinds of mistakes while solving problems". His experience and observations at the Alfred Binet Laboratory were the beginnings of his theory of cognitive development. He believed that children of different ages made different mistakes because of the “quality rather than quantity” of their intelligence. Piaget proposed four stages to describe the development process of children: sensorimotor stage, pre-operational stage, concrete operational st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Motor System
The motor system is the set of central and peripheral structures in the nervous system that support motor functions, i.e. movement. Peripheral structures may include skeletal muscles and neural connections with muscle tissues. Central structures include cerebral cortex, brainstem, spinal cord, pyramidal system including the upper motor neurons, extrapyramidal system, cerebellum, and the lower motor neurons in the brainstem and the spinal cord. Pyramidal motor system The pyramidal motor system, also called the pyramidal tract or the corticospinal tract, start in the motor center of the cerebral cortex.Rizzolatti G, Luppino G (2001) The Cortical Motor System. ''Neuron'' 31: 889-90SD/ref> There are upper and lower motor neurons in the corticospinal tract. The motor impulses originate in the giant pyramidal cells or Betz cells of the motor area; i.e., precentral gyrus of cerebral cortex. These are the upper motor neurons (UMN) of the corticospinal tract. The axons of these ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Motor Control
Motor control is the regulation of movement in organisms that possess a nervous system. Motor control includes reflexes as well as directed movement. To control movement, the nervous system must integrate multimodal sensory information (both from the external world as well as proprioception) and elicit the necessary signals to recruit muscles to carry out a goal. This pathway spans many disciplines, including multisensory integration, signal processing, coordination, biomechanics, and cognition, and the computational challenges are often discussed under the term sensorimotor control. Successful motor control is crucial to interacting with the world to carry out goals as well as for posture, balance, and stability. Some researchers (mostly neuroscientists studying movement, such as Daniel Wolpert and Randy Flanagan) argue that motor control is the reason brains exist at all. Neural control of muscle force All movements, e.g. touching your nose, require motor neurons to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cerebellum
The cerebellum (Latin for "little brain") is a major feature of the hindbrain of all vertebrates. Although usually smaller than the cerebrum, in some animals such as the mormyrid fishes it may be as large as or even larger. In humans, the cerebellum plays an important role in motor control. It may also be involved in some cognitive functions such as attention and language as well as emotional control such as regulating fear and pleasure responses, but its movement-related functions are the most solidly established. The human cerebellum does not initiate movement, but contributes to coordination, precision, and accurate timing: it receives input from sensory systems of the spinal cord and from other parts of the brain, and integrates these inputs to fine-tune motor activity. Cerebellar damage produces disorders in fine movement, equilibrium, posture, and motor learning in humans. Anatomically, the human cerebellum has the appearance of a separate structure attached to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Putamen
The putamen (; from Latin, meaning "nutshell") is a round structure located at the base of the forebrain (telencephalon). The putamen and caudate nucleus together form the dorsal striatum. It is also one of the structures that compose the basal nuclei. Through various pathways, the putamen is connected to the substantia nigra, the globus pallidus, the claustrum, and the thalamus, in addition to many regions of the cerebral cortex. A primary function of the putamen is to regulate movements at various stages (e.g. preparation and execution) and influence various types of learning. It employs GABA, acetylcholine, and enkephalin to perform its functions. The putamen also plays a role in degenerative neurological disorders, such as Parkinson's disease. History The word "putamen" is from Latin, referring to that which "falls off in pruning", from "putare", meaning "to prune, to think, or to consider". Until recently, most MRI research focused broadly on the basal ganglia as a wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Globus Pallidus
The globus pallidus (GP), also known as paleostriatum or dorsal pallidum, is a subcortical structure of the brain. It consists of two adjacent segments, one external, known in rodents simply as the globus pallidus, and one internal, known in rodents as the entopeduncular nucleus. It is part of the telencephalon, but retains close functional ties with the subthalamus in the diencephalon – both of which are part of the extrapyramidal motor system. The globus pallidus is a major component of the basal ganglia, with principal inputs from the striatum, and principal direct outputs to the thalamus and the substantia nigra. The latter is made up of similar neuronal elements, has similar afferents from the striatum, similar projections to the thalamus, and has a similar synaptology. Neither receives direct cortical afferents, and both receive substantial additional inputs from the intralaminar thalamus. Globus pallidus is Latin for "pale globe". Structure Pallidal nuclei are made u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nucleus (neuroanatomy)
In neuroanatomy, a nucleus (plural form: nuclei) is a cluster of neurons in the central nervous system, located deep within the cerebral hemispheres and brainstem. The neurons in one nucleus usually have roughly similar connections and functions. Nuclei are connected to other nuclei by tracts, the bundles (fascicles) of axons (nerve fibers) extending from the cell bodies. A nucleus is one of the two most common forms of nerve cell organization, the other being layered structures such as the cerebral cortex or cerebellar cortex. In anatomical sections, a nucleus shows up as a region of gray matter, often bordered by white matter. The vertebrate brain contains hundreds of distinguishable nuclei, varying widely in shape and size. A nucleus may itself have a complex internal structure, with multiple types of neurons arranged in clumps (subnuclei) or layers. The term "nucleus" is in some cases used rather loosely, to mean simply an identifiably distinct group of neurons, even if they ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Posterior Parietal Cortex
The posterior parietal cortex (the portion of parietal neocortex posterior to the primary somatosensory cortex) plays an important role in planned movements, spatial reasoning, and attention. Damage to the posterior parietal cortex can produce a variety of sensorimotor deficits, including deficits in the perception and memory of spatial relationships, inaccurate reaching and grasping, in the control of eye movement, and inattention. The two most striking consequences of PPC damage are apraxia and hemispatial neglect. Anatomy The posterior parietal cortex receives input from the three sensory systems that play roles in the localization of the body and external objects in space: the visual system, the auditory system, and the somatosensory system. In turn, much of the output of the posterior parietal cortex goes to areas of frontal motor cortex: the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, various areas of the secondary motor cortex, and the frontal eye field. The posterior parietal cort ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
