Biomedical subjects

Martin Lemay

Publications and source records attributed to Martin Lemay.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Speed-accuracy trade-offs in myocontrol.

Myoelectric (EMG) signals are used in assistive technology for prostheses, computer and domestic control. However, little is known about the capacity of controlling these signals. Specifically, it is unclear whether myocontrol, i.e., the control of myoelectric signals, obeys the same laws as motor control. Neurologically intact adult participants performed pointing tasks with EMG signals captured from the forehead or the hand in two modalities (sustained: stabilize the signal amplitude in the target; impulsion: produce an impulse and return to resting level). In the sustained modality, the time to reach the target (reach time) increased logarithmically with target amplitude, which is compatible with the predictions of Fitts' law. The rate of failure was not significantly affected by target amplitude. In the impulsion modality, the reach time and the rate of failure followed a bow-shaped pattern as a function of target amplitude. Stabilization time in the sustained modality followed a convex (bow-shaped) pattern for the forehead and a concave pattern for the hand. This was the only significant effect of electrode placement in this study. These findings suggest that myocontrol obeys laws that are distinct from those determining motor control, and that the muscular and intra-muscular synergies that produce EMG signals are specific of each pointing modality and target amplitude.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Multiple frames of reference for pointing to a remembered target.

Pointing with an unseen hand to a visual target that disappears prior to movement requires maintaining a memory representation about the target location. The target location can be transformed either into a hand-centered frame of reference during target presentation and remembered under that form, or remembered in terms of retinal and extra-retinal cues and transformed into a body-centered frame of reference before movement initiation. The main goal of the present study was to investigate whether the target is stored in memory in an eye-centered frame, a hand-centered frame or in both frames of reference concomitantly. The task was to locate, memorize, and point to a target in a dark environment. Hand movement was not visible. During the recall delay, participants were asked to move their hand or their eyes in order to disrupt the memory representation of the target. Movement of the eyes during the recall delay was expected to disrupt an eye-centered memory representation whereas movement of the hand was expected to disrupt a hand-centered memory representation by increasing movement variability to the target. Variability of movement amplitude and direction was examined. Results showed that participants were more variable on the directional component of the movement when required to move their hand during recall delay. On the contrary, moving the eyes caused an increase in variability only in the amplitude component of the pointing movement. Taken together, these results suggest that the direction of the movement is coded and remembered in a frame of reference linked to the arm, whereas the amplitude of the movement is remembered in an eye-centered frame of reference.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

The effect of Parkinson's disease on the control of multi-segmental coordination.

An experiment was designed to test whether or not Parkinson's disease (PD) patients were able to maintain endpoint kinematic patterns in a prehension task involving movement of the torso. Nine PD patients and nine healthy controls were asked to reach for and grasp a full cup of water that was either covered or uncovered and placed beyond the reach of the outstretched arm. An OPTOTRAK (Northern Digital) 3-dimensional motion analysis system was used to capture the movement of four markers placed on the arm, hand, and torso. The results indicated the Parkinson's patients had a decreased ability to maintain the kinematics of the end effector. The PD patients were also found to be impaired in terms of their ability to synchronize the arm, hand, and torso. More specifically, although the elderly controls seemed to employ a strategy of increasing the involvement of the torso when reaching to grasp the uncovered cup, no such strategy was observed in the PD patients. Collectively, the results suggest that the multi-joint synergies observed in the elderly controls, which help preserve relatively consistent endpoint trajectories, are disrupted in Parkinson's patients.

Aged↗

PubMed2005

Early Huntington's disease affects movements in transformed sensorimotor mappings.

This study examined the effect of transformed visual feedback on movement control in Huntington's disease (HD). Patients in the early stages of HD and controls performed aiming movements towards peripheral targets on a digitizing tablet and emphasizing precision. In a baseline condition, HD patients were slower but showed few precision problems in aiming. When visual feedback was inverted in both vertical and horizontal axes, patients showed problems in initial and terminal phases of movement where feedback is most critical. When visual feedback was inverted along a single axis as in a mirror-inversion, HD patients showed large deviations and over-corrections before adaptation. Adaptation was similar in both groups. These results suggest that HD impairs on-line error correction in novel movements.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Manual pointing to remembered targets...but also in a remembered visual context.

In this paper we investigated whether visual background information available during target presentation influences manual pointing to remembered targets. Younger and older participants manually pointed with their unseen hands to remembered or visible targets that were presented or not over a structured visible background. The results indicated that a structured visual background biased movement planning processes, but did not influence motor control processes, regardless of the fact that target location and the background were visible or remembered. How one uses visual background information for movement planning is not modified by aging.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Pointing to an allocentric and egocentric remembered target.

Pointing to a visual target that disappears prior to movement requires the maintenance of a memory representation about the location of the target. It has been shown that a target can be stored egocentrically, allocentrically, or in both frames of reference simultaneously. The main goal of the present study was to compare the accuracy and kinematics of a pointing movement to a remembered target when egocentric, allocentric, or combined egocentric and allocentric coding was possible. The task was to localize, memorize, and reach to a remembered target. Condition 1 was the "no-context" condition and involved presenting the target in a completely dark environment (egocentric condition). For 2 other conditions, the target was presented within a visual context provided by an illuminated square. Condition 2 was the "stationary-context" condition and involved keeping the context at the same position during the whole trial (egocentric and/or allocentric coding). Condition 3 was a "moved-context" condition that involved shifting the context to a different location during the recall delay (allocentric coding). Movement accuracy and kinematics results were strikingly similar for the moved-context and stationary-context conditions. These results suggest that when both allocentric and egocentric coding are possible, an allocentric strategy is used.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Effects of target presentation time, recall delay, and aging on the accuracy of manual pointing to remembered targets.

The issues addressed in 2 experiments in which 10 younger and 10 older adults participated were (a) whether the retention of a target location in memory for motor control purposes would be facilitated by an increase in target presentation time; (b) whether increasing the recall delay since the last exposure to the target would have deleterious effects on aiming accuracy or variability, or both; and (c) whether those effects would be mediated by aging. The results revealed that there is a short-lived (< 1 s) visual representation of target location. In addition, the results suggested that the nature of that representation dictates a movement strategy favoring higher peak movement velocity. None of the effects reported in the present study was affected by age, suggesting that the coding and retrieving processes of target location in memory for motor control purposes are not affected by age.

Aged↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Aging affects pointing to unseen targets encoded in an allocentric frame of reference.

The goal of the present study was to determine whether aging influences aiming performance to a remembered target encoded in an allocentric frame of reference. We presented four targets simultaneously. The targets were then withdrawn from the screen. Following a recall delay, only three of the targets were presented on the screen in the same configuration as before but at a different location from their first presentation. We asked younger (M=21.9 years) and older participants (M=73.8 years) to point first to the missing target. Because participants did not know where on the computer screen the targets would be presented at the end of the recall delay, they had no choice but to use an allocentric frame of reference to encode its location when the targets were first presented. The results indicate that older participants were significantly more variable when pointing to the remembered target than their younger counterparts, suggesting a decline of allocentric spatial memory with aging.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Pointing to an allocentric and egocentric remembered target in younger and older adults.

Previous reports have shown that older adults have difficulties in maintaining allocentric information in memory but not egocentric information. The present study evaluated pointing accuracy in younger and older adults for egocentric and allocentric task. The task was to localize and maintain one, two, or four target locations. Target(s) were presented with or without a surrounding white square in a dimly lit environment. Despite previous postulations, the results of the present study revealed that older adults were able to point to remembered egocentric and allocentric targets as accurately as younger adults regardless of task difficulty. However, older adults took more time pointing to allocentric targets as compared to younger adults. The longer movement time was caused by a lengthening of the deceleration phase, suggesting that during pointing, older adults rely more on visual information surrounding the target than younger adults.

Acceleration↗