Clinical Pilates in Practice: Prediction of Motor Learning

The authors of this paper used an ethological approach to test the hypothesis that practice-related refinements of multiple behavioural features would be independently predictive of motor learning.

Perry, Christopher M., Tarkeshwar Singh, Kayla G. Springer, Adam T. Harrison, Alexander C. McLain, and Troy M. Herter. "Multiple processes independently predict motor learning." Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation 17, no. 1 (2020). doi:10.1186/s12984-020-00766-3.

Key Points: Prediction Of Motor Learning

• Motor learning results from neural adaptations that produce refinements of behavioural features of motor tasks.

• Motor learning can induce changes in visual processing that are associated with the refinements of skilled limb movement.

• The interactions between skilled limb movements and visual search lead to coordinated patterns of the eyes and limbs (ie., hand-eye coordination).

• Experts with different visuomotor skills have better control of eye movements than novices.

  Interventions designed to improve control of eye movements and attention lead to improvements in visuomotor performance.

• Cortical areas that are known to process peripheral visual information exhibit greater involvement during motor tasks.

• Refinements of hand-eye coordination may contribute to motor learning.

• Sensory processes contribute to the planning and execution of skilled limb movements.

• Information from sensory feedback provides reinforcement, which plays an important role in motor learning.

• Increases in movement speed have a positive effect on task performance.

• Skilled limb movements, visual search, and hand-eye coordination are independent predictors of motor learning.

• Studies of motor learning should account for the various processes that may influence improvements in task performance.

Clinical Pilates in Practice

• Integrate vision!

  → Visual search is a separate task to be trained, and does not necessarily involved eye movement.

• Practice limb movements to task-specificity with and without vision.

• Integrate head/neck mobility so that gaze follows the hand(s) during movement.

  → Throwing Pearls on the Cadillac.

  → Archer on the Reformer.

  → Standing Arm Circles at the Tower.

• Introduce external stimuli to the functional task to challenge hand-eye coordination.