Latash Mark L
Department of Kinesiology, The Pennsylvania State University, Rec. Hall-267, University Park, Pennsylvania, 16802, USA.
Adv Exp Med Biol. 2016;957:81-103. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-47313-0_5.
The equilibrium-point hypothesis and its more recent version, the referent configuration hypothesis, represent the physical approach to the neural control of action. This hypothesis can be naturally combined with the idea of hierarchical control of movements and of synergic organization of the abundant systems involved in all actions. Any action starts with defining trajectories of a few referent coordinates for a handful of salient task-specific variables. Further, referent coordinates at hierarchically lower levels emerge down to thresholds of the tonic stretch reflex for the participating muscles. Stability of performance with respect to salient variables is reflected in the structure of inter-trial variance and phenomena of motor equivalence. Three lines of recent research within this framework are reviewed. First, synergic adjustments of the referent coordinate and apparent stiffness have been demonstrated during finger force production supporting the main idea of control with referent coordinates. Second, the notion of unintentional voluntary movements has been introduced reflecting unintentional drifts in referent coordinates. Two types of unintentional movements have been observed with different characteristic times. Third, this framework has been applied to studies of impaired movements in neurological patients. Overall, the physical approach searching for laws of nature underlying biological movement has been highly stimulating and productive.
平衡点假说及其最新版本——参考构型假说，代表了对动作进行神经控制的物理学方法。这一假说能够自然地与动作的分级控制理念以及参与所有动作的众多系统的协同组织理念相结合。任何动作都始于为少数几个突出的特定任务变量定义几个参考坐标的轨迹。此外，层次较低水平的参考坐标会一直细化到参与肌肉的紧张性牵张反射阈值。相对于突出变量的表现稳定性反映在试次间方差的结构和运动等效现象中。本文回顾了在此框架内最近的三项研究。第一，在手指力量产生过程中已证明参考坐标和表观刚度的协同调整，支持了用参考坐标进行控制的主要观点。第二，引入了无意自主运动的概念，反映了参考坐标中的无意漂移。已观察到两种具有不同特征时间的无意运动。第三，这一框架已应用于对神经疾病患者运动障碍的研究。总体而言，探寻生物运动背后自然规律的物理学方法极具启发性且成果丰硕。
