The Statistical Determinants of the Speed of Motor Learning.

It has recently been suggested that movement variability directly increases the speed of motor learning. Here we use computational modeling of motor adaptation to show that variability can have a broad range of effects on learning, both negative and positive. Experimentally, we also find contributin...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Kang He, You Liang, Farnaz Abdollahi, Moria Fisher Bittmann, Konrad Kording, Kunlin Wei
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2016-09-01
Series:PLoS Computational Biology
Online Access:http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC5015831?pdf=render
Description
Summary:It has recently been suggested that movement variability directly increases the speed of motor learning. Here we use computational modeling of motor adaptation to show that variability can have a broad range of effects on learning, both negative and positive. Experimentally, we also find contributing and decelerating effects. Lastly, through a meta-analysis of published papers, we verify that across a wide range of experiments, movement variability has no statistical relation with learning rate. While motor learning is a complex process that can be modeled, further research is needed to understand the relative importance of the involved factors.
ISSN:1553-734X
1553-7358