Progress in Motor Control : Skill Learning, Performance, Health, and Injury

This volume is the most recent installment of the Progress in Motor Control series. It contains contributions based on presentations by invited speakers at the Progress in Motor Control IX meeting held in at McGill University, Montreal, in July, 2013. Progress in Motor Control is the official scientific meeting of the International Society of Motor Control (ISMC). The Progress in Motor Control IXI meeting, and consequently this volume, provide a broad perspective on the latest research on motor control in humans and other species.

Progress in Motor Control: Skill Learning, Performance, Health and Injury is the most recent volume in the venerable series of the same name, based on the tradition of the great Nikolai Bernstein, one of the founders of the specialized field of neuroscience known as motor control. This volume covers motor control issues addressing the basic theoretical underpinnings of the control of actions, as well as detailed empirical considerations of motor behavior at multiple levels ranging from electrical properties of motoneurons to action-perception coupling. The volume also includes new research findings related to the field of motor control and the performing arts, as well as recent advances in our understanding of responses to injury, which will be of interest to clinicians and trainers focusing on motor skill learning and recovery.

This compilation of 15 chapters, written by an expert group of scientists and clinicians, explains how the nervous system organizes motor behavior, describes cutting-edge analytical techniques of complex movement, addresses motor control and skill acquisition in the performing arts, and applies motor control principles to explain injuries in performing artists, post-fatigue kinematic adaptation, and deficits in muscle activation and postural stability in neurological disease. The book includes 15 chapters in the following 4 sections:

• Sensorimotor Integration
• Variability
• Performing Arts
• Injury and Disease

Progress in Motor Control: Skill Learning, Performance, Health and Injury is an essential resource for trainers, performing arts teachers, neuropsychologists, neuroscientists, rehabilitation specialists (including physical, speech, vocational, and occupational therapists), neurologists, and students of these disciplines.