Background: The maintenance of balance and body orientation in humans is guaranteed by the adequate functioning of the postural

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Freitas, Sandra M.S.F., Marcos Duarte, and Mark L. Latash. Two kinematic synergies in voluntary whole-body movements during standing. J Neurophysiol 95: 636 -645, 2006. First published November 2, 2005 doi:10.1152/jn.00482.2005. We used a particular computational approach, the uncontrolled manifold hypothesis, to investigate joint angle covariation patterns during whole-body actions performed by standing persons. We hypothesized that two kinematic synergies accounted for the leg/trunk joint covariation across cycles during a rhythmic whole-body motion to stabilize two performance variables, the trunk orientation in the external space and the horizontal position of the center of mass (COM). Subjects stood on a force plate and performed whole-body rhythmic movements for 45 s under visual feedback on one of the four variables, the position of the center of pressure or the angle in one of the three joints (ankle, knee, or hip). The Fitts-like paradigm was used with two target amplitudes and six indices of difficulty (ID) for each of the four variables. This was done to explore the robustness of kinematic postural synergies. A speedaccuracy trade-off was observed in all feedback conditions such that the movement time scaled with ID and the scaling differed between the two movement amplitudes. Principal-component (PC) analysis showed the existence of a single PC in the joint space that accounted for over 95% of the joint angle variance. Analysis within the uncontrolled manifold hypothesis has shown that data distributions in the joint angle space were compatible with stabilization of both trunk orientation and COM location. We conclude that trunk orientation and the COM location are stabilized by co-varied changes of the major joint angles during whole-body movements. Despite the strong effects of movement amplitude and ID on performance, the structure of the joint variance showed only minor dependence on these task parameters. The two kinematic synergies (co-varied changes in the joint angles that stabilized the COM location and trunk orientation) have proven to be robust over a variety of tasks.

This study examined the hypothesis that the degree to which motor redundancy is used to coordinate joint motions for reaching is influenced by motor planning and enhanced when the task requires greater movement flexibility. Subjects reached at arm's length to the same centrally placed target under conditions where the target location was either certain or uncertain, using a double-step paradigm. The hypothesis was evaluated by partitioning the across-trials variance of the joint configuration at each percent of the reach into a component corresponding to the use of different joint angle combinations to achieve an equivalent hand position (GEV) and a component leading to a variable hand position (NGEV). Pointer-tip movement variability along the path and variable targeting error did not differ between conditions. Larger overall joint variance was found for the uncertain target condition. Most of this increase was GEV, which was significantly higher in the uncertain condition for control of both movement extent and movement direction. In contrast, NGEV differed between the two conditions only for the control of movement extent early in the reach, suggesting that target uncertainty led to inter-trial timing variability along the movement path. The results suggest that more flexible patterns of joint coordination are used when the nervous system must plan reaching movements to an uncertain target direction.

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We investigated the effect of joint immobilization on the postural sway during quiet standing. We hypothesized that center of pressure (COP), rambling, and trembling trajectories could be affected by joint immobilization. Ten young adults stood on a force plate during 60 s without and with immobilized joints (only knees constrained, CK; knees and hips, CH; and knees, hips and trunk, CT), with their eyes opened (EO) or closed (EC). The root mean square deviation (RMS, the standard deviation from the mean) and mean speed of COP, rambling, and trembling trajectories in the anterior-posterior and medial-lateral directions were analyzed. Similar effects of vision were observed for both directions: larger amplitude for all variables was observed in the EC condition. In the anterior-posterior direction, postural sway increased only when the knees, hips and trunk were immobilized. For the medial-lateral direction, the RMS and the mean speed of the COP, rambling, and trembling displacements decreased after immobilization of knees and hips and knees, hips and trunk. These findings indicate that the inverted pendulum model is unable to completely explain the processes involved in the control of the quiet upright stance in the anterior-posterior and medial-lateral directions.

This study investigated the use of motor abundance during the transport and placing of objects that required either precise or minimal orientation to the target. Analyses across repetitions of the structure of joint configuration variance relative to the position and orientation constraints were performed using the Uncontrolled Manifold (UCM) approach. Results indicated that the orientation constraint did not affect stability of the hand's spatial trajectory. Orientation was weakly stabilized during the late transport phase independent of the orientation constraint, indicating no default synergy stabilizing orientation. Stabilization of orientation for conditions most requiring it for successful insertion of the object was present primarily during the adjustment phase. The results support the hypothesis that a major advantage of a control scheme that utilizes motor abundance is the ability to resolve multiple task constraints simultaneously without undue interference among them.

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