Visuomotor tracking on a computer screen - an experimental paradigm to study the dynamics of motor control

In this work we propose a new experimental paradigm in the context of human motor control. Human subjects track a target with a mouse-pointer on a computer screen while the underlying dynamics is similar to a stick-balancing problem. This approach gives wide control over system parameters. We show that there are two scaling regions in the power spectrum of the distance r between mouse and target and 8nd a power law in the laminar phases distribution of r. We propose a model for this dynamics and compare the model results to the experimental 8ndings. c © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.