WEEK 10 discussion
In this week the topic was the motor system; how the nervous system controls all the movements in the body. We learned about different types of neurons that innervate muscles (Ia, Ib, alpha and gamma neurons), how they are used to recruit/initiate certain amount of muscle force (with different sizes of motor units) and how the brain receives information about muscle’s current status (muscle spindles and Golgi tendon organs). The latest is about sensory information which is conveyed to the brain. Brain then processes this information and adapts its motor input accordingly.
We also talked about motor brain hierarchy and how the motor input goes through the strategy, tactic and then execution phase. The most interesting part about the topic was that there is a proper planning mechanism in the brain before the actual movement happens. The planning of the movement starts already in premotor and supplementary motor cortex before the signal is sent to primary motor cortex and from there towards the spinal cord. This planning phase and the time signal travels to the muscle is measurable but we perceive it as it would happen instantly. This made me think that we always live in the past (dozens of milliseconds).
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