OBJECTIVES Findings from the contemporary psychological and movement science literature that appear to have implications for medical training are reviewed. Specifically, the review focuses on four factors that have been shown to enhance the learning of motor skills: observational practice; the learner's focus of attention; feedback, and self-controlled practice. OBSERVATIONAL PRACTICE Observa...

Neural spike trains, the primary communication signals in the brain, can be accurately modeled as point processes. For many years, significant theoretical work has been done on the construction of exact and approximate filters for state estimation from point process observations in continuous-time. We have previously developed approximate filters for state estimation from point process observat...

Monkeys traced spirals on a planar surface as unitary activity was recorded from either premotor or primary motor cortex. Using the population vector algorithm, the hand's trajectory could be accurately visualized with the cortical activity throughout the task. The time interval between this prediction and the corresponding movement varied linearly with the instantaneous radius of curvature; th...

The addition of differentiating follow-through motions can facilitate simultaneous learning of multiple motor skills that would otherwise interfere with each other. In this issue of Neuron, Sheahan and colleagues (2016) demonstrate that it is the preparation, not execution, of different follow-through movements that separates motor memories and reduces interference.

Many limb movements are composed of alternating flexions and extensions. However, the underlying spinal network mechanisms remain poorly defined. Here, we show that the intensity of synaptic excitation and inhibition in limb motoneurons varies in phase rather than out of phase during rhythmic scratchlike network activity in the turtle. Inhibition and excitation peak with the total neuron conduc...

Single neuron activity was recorded in monkey motor cortex during the execution of pointing movements in six directions. The amount of prior information was manipulated by varying the range of precued directions. A distribution of neural population activation was constructed in the space of movement directions. This population representation of movement direction was preshaped by the precue. Pe...

This study examines motor cortical representation of hand position and its relationship to the representation of hand velocity during reaching movements. In all, 978 motor cortical neurons were recorded from the proximal arm area of rostral motor cortex. The results demonstrate that position and velocity are simultaneously encoded by single motor cortical neurons in an additive fashion and that...

How very long-term (over many years) motor skill training shapes internal motor representation remains poorly understood. We provide valuable evidence that the football brain of Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior (the Brasilian footballer) recruits very limited neural resources in the motor-cortical foot regions during foot movements. We scanned his brain activity with a 3-tesla functional magnetic ...

The planning of goal-directed movements is highly adaptable; however, the basic mechanisms underlying this adaptability are not well understood. Even the features of movement that drive adaptation are hotly debated, with some studies suggesting remapping of goal locations and others suggesting remapping of the movement vectors leading to goal locations. However, several previous motor learning ...

In relation to mechanisms involved in functional recovery of manual dexterity from cervical cord injury or from motor cortical injury, our goal was to determine whether the movements that characterize post-lesion functional recovery are comparable to original movement patterns or do monkeys adopt distinct strategies to compensate the deficits depending on the type of lesion? To this aim, data d...