| Summary: | Rhythmic motions, regular or irregular, are an integral part of motor behavior both in health and in disease. Better understanding of its neural control mechanisms helps in developing methods for controlling the progression of diseases manifesting as rhythmic motions. I studied two specific aspects of rhythmic motions: bilateral coordination of hand tremors in human subjects and modular control of locomotion in invertebrates. Many types of tremors, including the physiological tremor (PT) and the essential tremor (ET) occur in limbs on both the sides of the body, with similar fundamental frequency of the oscillation. This raises the possibility that the contralateral tremors may have a common source or are otherwise coupled. However, while significant contralateral interaction is seen in these two types of tremors, only limited evidence of bilateral coherence has been shown in the previous literature. Therefore, in my study I explored the existence of a weak coupling between the left and right oscillators the may lead to intermittent bilateral coherence. I measured triaxial acceleration of the two hands and systematically assessed their bilateral coherence, using both stationary and non-stationary (wavelet-based) analyses methods. Measuring all three axes allowed examination of a more complete set...
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