Inchon Park, M.S.Well-coordinated behavior between the limbs is one of the remarkable abilities of human beings. Walking, running, and cycling are forms of highly coordinated simple cyclical motion. These kinds of movements require synchronized or alternated motion of the limbs. Bimanual movement is another good example of movements that are highly coordinated. Bimanual movements account for a substantial proportion of our daily life activities such as tying shoelaces, opening bottles, sending a...

Taewon Kim, M.S.Our daily life requires complex procedural skills, which are basically presented sequential movements, such as playing a musical instrument, driving a car, typing a computer keyboard, and texting with a smart phone. Thus, learning sequence movements become very important to people to live more efficiently. For example, driving a manual vehicle, which are sort of decision making movements, requires a complicated pattern of subsequent motor skills while changing down a gear from th...

Priya Patel, M.S.Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) is a delay in the development of motor skills, or difficulty in coordinating movements, which results in problems performing in sports and everyday tasks (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Around 4- to 10% of school aged children in United States are affected by DCD (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). DCD prevalence rates range from about 2% in the United Kingdom to 19% in Greece, with a worldwide average of 6%. Owing t...

Deanna Kennedy, M.S.Coordinating movements between the limbs is important for many activities of daily living and sport specific skills. Buttoning your shirt, opening a bottle, driving your car, and serving a tennis ball are tasks that involve some type of coordination between the limbs. Although these examples of bimanual movements are relatively easy for most individuals to produce, other more complex coordination patterns have proved to be quite difficult. Bimanual tasks like playing the pian...

Deanna Kennedy, M.S.Often athletic performance seeks to improve accuracy and consistency. For example, while playing golf, we want to consistently hit the ball into the hole. However, many factors affect our ability to produce smooth and accurate movements. One such factor is motor output variability (MOV), defined as the unintentional variations in the output of voluntary contractions. It is a natural and inherent phenomenon that can be observed in every movement or contraction made or repeated...

Jason Boyle, Ph.DOur nervous system is highly adaptable in perceiving, analyzing and executing movements in relation to an ever-changing perceptual environment. We use vision, knowledge of limb location, and anticipation of force production while simultaneously recognizing variability in our judgment to execute movements through the world around us. Whether it is simple (reaching for a door knob) or complex (threading a needle), goal directed movement has been repeatedly shown to follow a speed/...

Deanna Kennedy, M.S. The ability to coordinate movements between the limbs is important for many activities of daily living and sport specific skills. For example, tying your shoes, slicing bread, driving your car, and serving a tennis ball are tasks that involve some type of coordination between the limbs. However, the role of each limb may vary with different task requirements. Some tasks, such as clapping your hands, require the limbs to produce mirror movements in both time and space. O...

 Jason Boyle, Ph.DOur muscles are controlled by “motor units”, which each consist of a neuron, and the muscle fiber(s) it activates or “innervates”. The muscle that responds is termed an “effector”. Brain mapping studies have shown that a disproportionate area of the motor cortex governs certain effectors of the body. For example, your fingers, lips, and tongue are highly innervated organs that can execute complex movement patterns, but your toes are not ...