We used a cognitive architecture (ACT-R) to explore the procedural learning of surgical tasks and then to understand the process of perceptual motor learning and skill decay in surgical skill performance. The ACT-R cognitive model simulates declarative memory processes during motor learning. In this ongoing study, four surgical tasks (bimanual carrying, peg transfer, needle passing, and suture ...

Recent efforts to explain the underlying mechanisms of action observation have resulted in several theoretical frameworks. The Common Coding framework proposes that the perception and action areas of the brain share representations of visual and motor feedback such that areas are activated concurrently, there is a benefit to an individual's perceptual ability and confidence. The MOSAIC framewor...

Motor skill expertise developed through practice is supported by implicit learning that leads to gradually improving performance. Previous studies examining this type of learning in the lab have used perceptual-motor sequence learning tasks, such as the Serial Interception Sequence Learning (SISL) task. In the SISL task participants respond to scrolling visual cues that follow a covertly-embedd...

This paper introduces some concepts from the field of motor learning and their possible applications to the doublebass. Basic issues of motor performance and perceptual-motor integration form a proposal to enhance skilled instrumental performance. Posture and motion are analyzed under principal guidelines of human ergonomics. Movements used in doublebass performance are abridged to the concept ...

This study evaluated whether apraxia can be understood as due to impaired motor representations or motor imagery necessary for appropriate object-use, imitation, and pantomime. The causal role of the left inferior parietal lobe (IPL), which is heavily implicated in apraxia, is also evaluated. These processes are appraised in light of the proposed ventro-dorsal sub-stream of the classic two visu...

objective in this article, a motor skill disorder called developmental coordination disorder (dcd), that is usually first diagnosed during childhood, is explained and discussed. in the year 1987, dcd was formally recognized as a distinct disorder in children by the american psychiatric association  (apa). dcd is a generalized term for the children who have some degrees of impairment in the deve...

Predictions about one's own action capabilities as well as the action capabilities of others are thought to be based on a simulation process involving linked perceptual and motor networks. Given the central role of motor experience in the formation of these networks, one's present motor capabilities are thought to be the basis of their perceptual judgments about actions. However, it remains unk...

Currently there is considerable debate as to the nature of the pathways that are responsible for the perception and motor performance. We have studied the relationship between perceived speed, which is the experiential representation of a moving stimulus, and the speed of smooth pursuit eye movements, the motor action. We determined psychophysical thresholds for detecting small perturbations in...