As long as we only focus on kinematics, rhythmic movement appears to be a concatenation of discrete movements or discrete movement appears to be a truncated rhythmic movement. However, whether or not the neural control processes of discrete and rhythmic movements are distinct has not yet been clearly understood. Here, we address this issue by examining the motor learning transfer between these ...

Kinesin is a motor protein that uses the energy derived from the hydrolysis of ATP to power the transport of organelles along microtubules. To probe the mechanism of this chemical-to-mechanical energy transduction reaction, the movement of microtubules across glass surfaces coated with kinesin was perturbed by raising the viscosity of the buffer solution. When the viscosity of the solution used...

Bidirectional axonal transport driven by kinesin and dynein along microtubules is critical to neuronal viability and function. To evaluate axonal transport mechanisms, we developed a high-resolution imaging system to track the movement of amyloid precursor protein (APP) vesicles in Drosophila segmental nerve axons. Computational analyses of a large number of moving vesicles in defined genetic b...

Dynein is a microtubule-based molecular motor that is involved in various biological functions, such as axonal transport, mitosis, and cilia/flagella movement. Although dynein was discovered 50 years ago, the progress of dynein research has been slow due to its large size and flexible structure. Recent progress in understanding the force-generating mechanism of dynein using x-ray crystallograph...

Introduction: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a common neurodegenerative disease leading to the movement disorder and destruction of myelin. Physical exercise delays the onset of neurodegenerative processes by preventing the destruction of myelin and oligodendrocytes. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of high-intensity exercise preconditioning on gene expression asso...

Kinesins are molecular motors that transport various cargoes along microtubule tracks using energy derived from ATP hydrolysis. Although the motor domains of kinesins are structurally similar, the family contains members that move on microtubules in opposite directions. Recent biochemical and biophysical studies of several kinesins make it possible to identify structural elements responsible fo...

How neurons in the primary motor cortex control arm movements is not yet understood. Here we show that the equations of motion governing reaching simplify when expressed in spatial coordinates. In this fixed reference frame, joint torques are the sums of vector cross products between the spatial positions of limb segments and their spatial accelerations and velocities. The consequences that fol...

The maintenance of movement accuracy uses prior performance errors to correct future motor plans; this motor-learning process ensures that movements remain quick and accurate. The control of predictive saccades, in which anticipatory movements are made to future targets before visual stimulus information becomes available, serves as an ideal paradigm to analyze how the motor system utilizes pri...

Neurophysiological studies on non-human primates have provided a large body of information on the response patterns of neurons in primary motor cortex during volitional motor tasks. Rather than finding a single simple pattern of activity in primary motor cortex neurons, these studies illustrate that neural activity in this area reflects many different types of information, including spatial goa...

Trial-to-trial variability in the execution of movements and motor skills is ubiquitous and widely considered to be the unwanted consequence of a noisy nervous system. However, recent studies have suggested that motor variability may also be a feature of how sensorimotor systems operate and learn. This view, rooted in reinforcement learning theory, equates motor variability with purposeful expl...