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Mobility and Motor Function
Mobility and Motor Function
Mobility and Motor Function
The brain controls voluntary and involuntary movement through a complicated system that involves multiple areas of the brain as well as the spinal cord. The brain must plan movement using the senses, create and send signals and then control muscle action, while predicting problems.
Disorders like Parkinson's disease and other neurological disorders can interfere with this process, causing tremors, slowness, stiffness, and involuntary or uncoordinated movement.
Understanding the connection between the brain and movement continues to evolve. Although the primary motor cortex was commonly assumed to store motor sequences, a BrainsCAN-supported study found overlapping regions in the premotor and parietal cortices that also store motor sequences at different levels of complexity. This should help lead to a better understanding of how movement skills are learned.
Another study found that practice can improve dual-task ability — being able to plan ahead while controlling ongoing movement. Researchers also found there's a limit to planning future movement, so there's only so much future information can accelerate movement planning.
And what about how movement affects the brain? A study looking at whether handedness affects how we process numbers found that brain processing of numbers is the same whether you're left- or right-handed. A specific region on the left side of the brain is responsible for understanding what numbers represent, so understanding why could assist children struggling with learning numbers.