"Normal" Movement: BBS Call for Commentators

Below is the abstract of a forthcoming target article on: "NORMAL MOVEMENTS" IN ATYPICAL POPULATIONS by Mark Latash & J. Greg Anson This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be current BBS Associates or nominated by a current BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please send email to: bbs(a)ecs.soton.ac.uk or write to: Behavioral and Brain Sciences Department of Psychology University of Southampton Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator. An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection by anonymous ftp (or gopher or world-wide-web) according to the instructions that follow after the abstract. ____________________________________________________________________ WHAT ARE "NORMAL MOVEMENTS" IN ATYPICAL POPULATIONS? Mark L. Latash Department of Exercise and Sport Science Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA 16802, USA MLL11(a)psu.edu J. Greg Anson University of Otago Dunedin, New Zealand ABSTRACT: Redundancy of the motor control system gives the central control structures options for solving everyday motor problems. The choice of particular control patterns is based on priorities (coordinative rules) that are presently unknown. Motor patterns observed in unimpaired young adults reflect these priorities. We hypothesize that in certain atypical conditions, which may include disorders in perception of the environment and decision-making, structural or biochemical changes within the central nervous system, and/or structural changes of the effectors, the central nervous system may reconsider its priorities. A new set of priorities will reflect the current state of the system and may lead to different patterns of voluntary movement. In such conditions, changed motor patterns should be considered not pathological but rather adaptive to a primary disorder and may even be viewed as optimal for a given state of the system of movement production. Therapeutic approaches should not be directed towards restoring the motor patterns to as close to "normal" as possible but rather towards resolving the original underlying problem. We illustrate this approach with movements in amputees and patients with Parkinson's disease, dystonia, and Down syndrome. KEYWORDS: Voluntary Movement, Motor Control, Movement Disorders, Coordination, Posture, Pre-programming, Parkinson's disease, Down syndrome -------------------------------------------------------------- To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this article, an electronic draft is retrievable by anonymous ftp from ftp.princeton.edu according to the instructions below (the filename is bbs.latash). Please do not prepare a commentary on this draft. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article. ------------------------------------------------------------- To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either: ftp princeton.edu or ftp cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk When you are asked for your login, type: anonymous Enter password as queried (your password is your actual userid: yourlogin(a)yourhost.whatever.whatever - be sure to include the "@") cd /pub/harnad/BBS To show the available files, type: ls Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example): get bbs.latash When you have the file(s) you want, type: quit These files are also on the World Wide Web and retrievable with Netscape, Mosaic, gopher, archie, veronica, etc. The URLs are: http://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/bbs.html ftp://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.latash ftp//ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.latash ---------- Where the above procedure is not available there are two fileservers: ftpmail(a)decwrl.dec.com and bitftp(a)pucc.bitnet that will do the transfer for you. To one or the other of them, send the following one line message: help for instructions (which will be similar to the above, but will be in the form of a series of lines in an email message that ftpmail or bitftp will then execute for you). -------------------------------------------------------------