A philosophical introduction

Abstract

Motor control is an area of science exploring natural laws that define how the nervous system interacts with other body parts and the environment to produce purposeful, coordinated movements. Currently, there is no adequate language for motor control. Some key features of the system for movement production make it look suboptimal from the point of view of a contemporary engineer or a control theory expert. These include the slow muscles generating length- and velocity-dependent forces, confusing sensory receptors, long conduction pathways, and neurons with threshold properties. Motor control is a field that starts with an axiom that these seemingly poorly designed features are, in fact, optimal given the range of everyday motor tasks.