Episode 133: Motor Control

The Science of Everything Podcast

James Fodor

Natural Sciences, Science, Social Sciences

4.8 • 750 Ratings

🗓️ 1 January 2023

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A journey through the complex network of regions controlling the human motor system, beginning with the spinal cord and its central pattern generators, and working up through the primary motor cortex, the premotor cortex, the posterior parietal cortex, the cerebellum, and the basal ganglia. I discuss the computational roles of each part of the motor control hierarchy, focusing on what functions are performed and what information is represented in each unique brain region. Overall I emphasise the complex interaction between top-down and bottom-up feedback in controlling muscle movement and executing complex motor tasks. Recommended pre-listening is Episode 132: The Muscular System, and Episode 38: Neurons and Synapses. If you enjoyed the podcast please consider supporting the show by making a PayPal donation or becoming a Patreon supporter. https://www.patreon.com/jamesfodor https://www.paypal.me/ScienceofEverything

Transcript

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0:00.0	Oh, wow, oh, oh, wow, oh, wow, oh, wow.
0:13.0	Oh, wow.
0:15.0	Oh, my. Hello, you're listening to The Science of Everything podcast, episode 133, Motor Control.
0:40.0	I'm your host, James Fodor.
0:42.0	In this episode, we're going to continue from where we left off in the previous episode,
0:46.2	which is the prerequisite listening, by the way, episode 132, the muscular system.
0:50.3	We're going to pick up from where we left off there and talk about how muscles and the contraction thereof are controlled by the central nervous system.
0:58.6	So we're going to talk about some of the computational difficulties with controlling the motor system and some of the solutions that have been devised by evolution to resolve these.
1:09.8	We're going to go through and talk about the spinal cord
1:11.7	and how it contains motor programs that produce patterns of muscle contractions
1:17.9	to produce more complicated motions.
1:20.2	We're going to talk about locomotion in particular
1:21.8	and how that is mediated by the spinal cord
1:24.7	and parts of the midbrain and brain stem.
1:27.6	Then we're going to talk about the role of the cortex, including the parietal cortex,
1:31.9	the primary motor cortex, and the premotor cortex, and look at some of the different ways in
1:35.7	which aspects of motor control and motion representation are encoded by neurons there.
1:43.3	And we'll also discuss the cerebellum, which is the bit of the brain at the back of the skull and its role in performing specific types of computations for fine tuning and giving feedback to motor control. And we'll conclude by looking up briefly at the basal ganglia and its role in action selection. So I already mentioned that the
2:01.7	prerequisite episode for this is 132 on the muscular system. Also would be good to have listened
2:06.9	to an episode or two on the nervous system. So episode 38 on neurons and synapses would be a good
2:13.4	example to get a bit of background for what we're going to talk about today. So there's quite a bit to get through. Let's jump right in and start talking about some of the
2:20.9	computational factors or problems and difficulties that need to be overcome with respect to motor control.
	...

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