The Motor System

Full course description

This course introduces students to the motor system and how it generates motor output. Students will learn that the hardware for generating action is hierarchically organized, with interconnected neuronal circuits of increasing complexity at the level of the spinal cord, the brain stem, and the cerebral cortex. The course also covers the ancient anatomical structures underlying motivational drive (hypothalamus), action selection (basal ganglia) and online optimization of ongoing movements (cerebellum). Students will learn about current theories on how these systems function and contribute to action generation. The course emphasizes the various levels of neural movement representation as well as the reciprocity between perception and action: action oftentimes emerges as a direct or indirect response to sensory input and in turn influences perceptual processes. Consequently, the interplay between perception and action is a guiding principle at all levels of the motor system, from the low-level reflex arcs in the spinal cord, to the skilled execution of a complex action.

The present course joins concepts from biology and psychology by investigating how actors effectively plan, select and execute context-appropriate actions. Additionally, understanding concepts underlying ‘central pattern generators’, movement-related ‘neural state space trajectories’, and computational models of cerebellar functioning will build on the knowledge and skills acquired in the ‘Advanced Calculus and Dynamical Systems’ course in Period 4. Moreover, principles such as population coding and receptive fields covered in earlier courses will be extended to the motor domain, while several of the discussed neural structures (e.g., basal ganglia, cerebellum) will also prominently feature in the parallel ‘Learning & Memory’ course.

The final assessment for this course is a numerical grade between 0,0 and 10,0.