The gravitational imprint on sensorimotor planning and control

White, Olivier; Gaveau, Jérémie; Bringoux, Lionel; Crevecoeur, Frédéric

doi:10.1152/jn.00381.2019

Cited by 50 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 157 publications

(160 reference statements)

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“…Finally, there is accumulating evidence that the accurate control of voluntary movements, such as reaching, is correspondingly altered during space flight (Carriot et al, 2004 ; Scotto Di Cesare et al, 2014 ; Gaveau et al, 2016 ; White et al, 2020 ). When instructed to reach up or down, human subjects demonstrate asymmetric arm kinematic suggesting that the brain also uses an internal model of gravity to predict and take advantage of its mechanical properties to optimize effort (Gaveau et al, 2016 ).…”

Section: Gravity Is Important On Earth: Posture Perception and Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenges to the Vestibular System in Space: How the Brain Responds and Adapts to Microgravity

Carriot

Mackrous

Cullen

2021

Front. Neural Circuits

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In the next century, flying civilians to space or humans to Mars will no longer be a subject of science fiction. The altered gravitational environment experienced during space flight, as well as that experienced following landing, results in impaired perceptual and motor performance—particularly in the first days of the new environmental challenge. Notably, the absence of gravity unloads the vestibular otolith organs such that they are no longer stimulated as they would be on earth. Understanding how the brain responds initially and then adapts to altered sensory input has important implications for understanding the inherent abilities as well as limitations of human performance. Space-based experiments have shown that altered gravity causes structural and functional changes at multiple stages of vestibular processing, spanning from the hair cells of its sensory organs to the Purkinje cells of the vestibular cerebellum. Furthermore, ground-based experiments have established the adaptive capacity of vestibular pathways and neural mechanism that likely underlie this adaptation. We review these studies and suggest that the brain likely uses two key strategies to adapt to changes in gravity: (i) the updating of a cerebellum-based internal model of the sensory consequences of gravity; and (ii) the re-weighting of extra-vestibular information as the vestibular system becomes less (i.e., entering microgravity) and then again more reliable (i.e., return to earth).

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Section: Gravity Is Important On Earth: Posture Perception and Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenges to the Vestibular System in Space: How the Brain Responds and Adapts to Microgravity

Carriot

Mackrous

Cullen

2021

Front. Neural Circuits

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“…More precisely, investigating vertical arm movements, multiple studies have reported directiondependent kinematics (Papaxanthis et al, 2005;Gentili et al, 2007;Le Seac'h and McIntyre, 2007;Gaveau and Papaxanthis, 2011b;Gaveau et al, 2011Gaveau et al, , 2014Gaveau et al, , 2016Gaveau et al, , 2021Yamamoto and Kushiro, 2014;Yamamoto et al, 2016Yamamoto et al, , 2019Hondzinski et al, 2016;Poirier et al, 2021aPoirier et al, , 2020 and systematic negative epochs in the phasic activity of antigravity muscles (Gaveau et al, 2021;Poirier et al, 2021a). These results are thought to represent the hallmarks of a gravity-related optimization processes that occurs during motor planning to minimize muscle effort (for reviews see (Berret et al, 2019;White et al, 2020). In our recent study (Poirier et al, 2021a), we found that directiondependent kinematics and negative epochs were still present during movements performed with the non-dominant arm, but significantly reduced compared to movements performed with the dominant arm.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aging decreases the lateralization of gravity-related effort minimization during vertical arm movements

Poirier

Papaxanthis

Juranville

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Motor lateralization refers to differences in the neural organization of cerebral hemispheres, resulting in different control specializations between the dominant and the non-dominant motor systems. Multiple studies proposed that the dominant hemisphere is specialized for open-loop optimization-like processes. Recently, comparing arm kinematics between upward and downward movements, we found that the dominant arm outperformed the non-dominant one regarding gravity-related motor optimization in healthy young subjects. The literature about aging effects on motor control presents several neurophysiological and behavioral evidences for an age-related reduction of motor lateralization. Here, we compare the lateralization of a well-known gravity-related optimal motor control process between young and older adults. Thirty healthy young (mean age = 24.1 ± 3 years) and nineteen healthy older adults (mean age = 73.0 ± 8) performed single degree-of-freedom vertical arm movements between two targets (upward and downward).Participants alternatively reached with their dominant and non-dominant arms. We recorded arm kinematics and electromyographic activities of the prime movers (Anterior and Posterior Deltoids) and we analyzed parameters thought to represent the hallmark of the gravity-related optimization process (i.e directional asymmetries and negative epochs on the phasic EMG activity). We found no arm difference in older participants, such that parameters with both arms were similar to those of young participants with their dominant arm. With the non-dominant arm, these results suggest that older adults better optimize gravity effects than young adults.

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“…On Earth, the vertical direction is estimated by a combination of gravity, body, and vision cues, each weighted based on its reliability 72 . In weightlessness, the motor and perceptual “vertical” are often dominated by body-centered cues 73 – 75 . In the present experiments, there were no gravity-related cues nor visual cues about the imaginary ball trajectory.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mental imagery of object motion in weightlessness

2021

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Mental imagery represents a potential countermeasure for sensorimotor and cognitive dysfunctions due to spaceflight. It might help train people to deal with conditions unique to spaceflight. Thus, dynamic interactions with the inertial motion of weightless objects are only experienced in weightlessness but can be simulated on Earth using mental imagery. Such training might overcome the problem of calibrating fine-grained hand forces and estimating the spatiotemporal parameters of the resulting object motion. Here, a group of astronauts grasped an imaginary ball, threw it against the ceiling or the front wall, and caught it after the bounce, during pre-flight, in-flight, and post-flight experiments. They varied the throwing speed across trials and imagined that the ball moved under Earth’s gravity or weightlessness. We found that the astronauts were able to reproduce qualitative differences between inertial and gravitational motion already on ground, and further adapted their behavior during spaceflight. Thus, they adjusted the throwing speed and the catching time, equivalent to the duration of virtual ball motion, as a function of the imaginary 0 g condition versus the imaginary 1 g condition. Arm kinematics of the frontal throws further revealed a differential processing of imagined gravity level in terms of the spatial features of the arm and virtual ball trajectories. We suggest that protocols of this kind may facilitate sensorimotor adaptation and help tuning vestibular plasticity in-flight, since mental imagery of gravitational motion is known to engage the vestibular cortex.

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The gravitational imprint on sensorimotor planning and control

Cited by 50 publications

References 157 publications

Challenges to the Vestibular System in Space: How the Brain Responds and Adapts to Microgravity

Challenges to the Vestibular System in Space: How the Brain Responds and Adapts to Microgravity

Aging decreases the lateralization of gravity-related effort minimization during vertical arm movements

Mental imagery of object motion in weightlessness

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