Understanding Motion Control of the Body Using Optimal Feedback Control

The motion control mechanism of the body is a major subject of neuroscience, and investigations of it are expected to contribute to an improved understanding of our bodies. An optimal feedback control (OFC) model is one of the newest control models introduced to neuroscience. In this paper, the motion control mechanism of reaching arm movements was reviewed in the framework of OFC referring to recent works carried out at the author's laboratory. The movement of the arm was simulated using an iterative linear- quadratic- Gaussian method to realize an approximate optimal controller. The reactive response to a perturbing force during reaching movements of the arm was measured experimentally, and compared with the simulated results using OFC. OFC was able to reproduce some aspects of the reaching movements of the arm when a cost function was appropriately defined. This suggests that OFC is a plausible base model to describe the internal state of the body, and a further improvement of the model is expected to contribute to the development of efficient training methods for improving quality of movement, both for healthy and disabled persons.