Experimenting with Theoretical Motor Neuroscience

ABSTRACT

Motor neuroscience is well over 100 years old, with seminal work such as G. T. Fritz and E. Hitzig's discovery of motor cortex occurring in 1870. Theoretical motor neuroscience has been ongoing for at least the last 50 years. How mature a scientific discipline is motor neuroscience? Are experimentalists and theoreticians working together productively to help the field progress? This article addresses these questions by advancing the following theses. Motor neuroscience remains at a descriptive stage due to the incredible complexity of the problem to be solved. The proliferation of models—and distinct modeling camps—stems from the absence of unifying conceptual constructs. To advance the field, theoreticians must rely more heavily on the concept of falsification by producing models that lend themselves to clear experimental testing.

Keywords:

• Equilibrium Point Theory
• falsification
• Optimal Feedback Control
• theoretical motor neuroscience

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank Dagmar Sternad for her helpful comments. The meeting focused on discussing this topic was supported, in part, by NIH grant R13-NS065552. Robert Ajemian was supported, in part, by NSF grant #IIS-0904594 for Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience. Neville Hogan was supported, in part, by the Eric P. and Evelyn E. Newman Fund.

The authors contributed equally to this article.

Notes

1. Motion along a circle with uniform angular speed about a point (punctum aequans) other than its geometric center.

2. Maxwell's initial 20 equations were elegantly reduced to 4 by Oliver Heaviside in an act of mathematical synthesis.

3. This, in turn, laid the foundation for Guglielmo Marconi's development of wireless telegraphy and global radio communication.

4. Neither Michelson nor Morley considered their negative result to disprove the existence of ether.

5. The American Stroke Association estimates that Americans will pay about $73.7 billion in 2010 for stroke-related medical costs and disability.

6. As soon as task-dependent differences are allowed, an infinity of experiments is required for strict falsification.