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The Journal of Neuroscience, September 15, 2002, 22(18):8297-8304
Movement Smoothness Changes during Stroke Recovery
Brandon
Rohrer1,
Susan
Fasoli1,
Hermano Igo
Krebs1,
Richard
Hughes3,
Bruce
Volpe4,
Walter R.
Frontera3,
Joel
Stein3, and
Neville
Hogan1, 2
Departments of 1 Mechanical Engineering and
2 Brain and Cognitive Science, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, 3 Spaulding
Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02114, and
4 Department of Neurology and Neuroscience, Weill Medical
College of Cornell University, Burke Medical Research Institute, White
Plains, New York 10605
 |
ABSTRACT |
Smoothness is characteristic of coordinated human movements, and
stroke patients' movements seem to grow more smooth with recovery. We
used a robotic therapy device to analyze five different measures of
movement smoothness in the hemiparetic arm of 31 patients recovering
from stroke. Four of the five metrics showed general increases in
smoothness for the entire patient population. However, according to the
fifth metric, the movements of patients with recent stroke grew less
smooth over the course of therapy. This pattern was reproduced in a
computer simulation of recovery based on submovement blending,
suggesting that progressive blending of submovements underlies stroke recovery.
Key words:
stroke recovery; submovements; smoothness; segmentation; robotic therapy; minimum-jerk; blending
 |
INTRODUCTION |
Recent epidemiological data that
have suggested increasing prevalence of stroke have prompted vigorous
novel treatment trials and the use of unique brain-imaging tools to
begin to understand the pathophysiology of stroke (Chollet et al.,
1991
; Dam et al., 1993
). Most survivors of stroke will have impaired
brain function and permanent levels of disability. As survival from
stroke improves with modern medical care, the increasing number of
these patients has also prompted the drive to understand the functional
motor recovery process. Recently, investigators armed with new tools (Krebs et al., 1998a
, 1999
; Lum et al., 1999
; Kahn et al., 2001
) have
begun the detailed kinematic analysis of motor recovery. Based on
observations of changes in movement smoothness in recovering stroke
patients (Krebs et al., 1998b
), we measured the development of movement
smoothness as patients with stroke recovered motor function in formerly
paralyzed arms.
Movement smoothness has been used as a measure of motor performance of
both healthy subjects (Platz et al., 1994
) and persons with stroke
(Trombly, 1993
; Kahn et al., 2001
). Smoothness measures have most often
been based on minimizing jerk, the third time derivative of position
(Flash and Hogan, 1985
), although many other measures are possible,
including snap, the fourth time derivative of position (Edelman and
Flash, 1987
), and counting peaks in speed (Brooks et al., 1973
; Fetters
and Todd, 1987
; Cirstea and Levin, 2000
; Kahn et al., 2001
). Smoothness
in the minimum-jerk sense has been used to identify presymptomatic
individuals with Huntington's disease (Smith et al., 2000
) and has
also been shown to account for the two-thirds power law, widely
considered an invariant in human movement (Wann et al., 1988
; Gribble
and Ostry, 1996
; Todorov and Jordan, 1998
; Schaal and Sternad,
2001
).
Although smoothness is a characteristic of unimpaired movements,
perhaps the most striking feature of the earliest movements made by
patients recovering from stroke is their lack of smoothness; they
appear to be composed of a series of discrete submovements (Krebs et
al., 1999
). Evidence of discrete submovements has also been found in
the movements of healthy subjects (Milner, 1992
; Vallbo and Wessberg,
1993
). Complex movements have been decomposed into submovements as an
analysis tool (Morasso and Mussa-Ivaldi, 1982
; Flash and Henis, 1991
;
Berthier, 1996
; Burdet and Milner, 1998
) with apparent success.
Although the existence of submovements has not been demonstrated
unequivocally, they account for many patterns in human movement
(Doeringer and Hogan, 1998
; Hogan et al., 1999
).
Krebs et al. (1998b)
report that movements made by patients recovering
from stroke become smoother as recovery proceeds. This was attributed
to a progressive overlapping and blending of submovements, although
only isolated examples of submovement blending were reported. In this
study, we present additional evidence that recovery proceeds by
progressive blending of submovements. We quantify the smoothness of
movements made by stroke patients with their affected limb and how it
changed over the course of recovery. We present an analysis of how
progressive blending of submovements would affect measures of
smoothness and show that it is consistent with our experimental observations.
 |
MATERIALS AND METHODS |
Subjects. Thirty-one subjects (10 women and 21 men)
participated in this study performed at the Spaulding Rehabilitation
Hospital (Boston, MA). Twelve subjects were acute-stage inpatients who had suffered their first unilateral infarct <1 month before beginning the study, and 19 were chronic-stage outpatients from 12 to 53 months
after stroke. Subjects were between 19 and 78 years of age (mean age of
55.6 years for inpatients and 56.2 years for outpatients), hemiparetic,
and able to understand and carry out verbal instructions. See Table
1 for a summary of clinical evaluation scores and times after stroke for inpatient and outpatient groups. Only
subjects who participated in more than five therapy sessions and had
completed >100 point-to-point movements were included in this
analysis. The protocol was approved by the Human Studies Committee at
Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital and by the Committee on the Use of
Human Experimental Subjects of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. All subjects gave informed consent.
Apparatus. MIT-MANUS, a planar robot, was designed as
a therapy aid in the Newman Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Hogan et al., 1995
; Krebs et al., 1998b
, 1999
). A key
characteristic of MIT-MANUS is its "backdrivability" (i.e., its
ability to "get out of the way" when pushed by a subject). Thus,
subjects' movements were minimally obscured by the dynamics of the
robot. During all movements analyzed and presented in this paper, the
robot was unpowered and acted as a passive measurement device that
restricted patients' hand motion to a horizontal plane.
Procedure. Over the course of a therapy session, subjects
were directed to make a number of point-to-point movements, ending as
near to the directed point as possible. With a computer display of a
center target, eight targets equally spaced around a circle, and the
current position of the robot endpoint, subjects moved from the center
to each target and back, starting at "North" and proceeding
clockwise (Fig. 1). Each target was 14 cm
from the center. Inpatient subjects typically received robot therapy
five times per week for 4 weeks and outpatients three times per week for 6 weeks. Each session lasted ~1 hr. A computer recorded the position, velocity, and force exerted at the robot handle. In addition,
each subject was clinically assessed by a "blinded" clinician at
the beginning, middle, and end of therapy using a collection of several
clinical scales. In this study, only the results of the Fugl-Meyer Test
of Upper Extremity Function (Fugl-Meyer et al., 1975
) are reported.

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Figure 1.
Top view, Reaching task. The task
required each subject to attempt to move from the center position to a
target and then return to the center, beginning at the North
target, and repeating for each target in a clockwise pattern
around the circle. Subjects were presented with a visual
display of the task similar to that in the figure, which also included
a display of the subject's hand position. The robot remained unpowered
for the duration of all of the trials incorporated into this analysis.
Each target is 14 cm from the center.
|
|
Analysis. In addition to calculating the mean speed, peak
speed, and duration, five measures of smoothness were applied to the
kinematic data collected during point-to-point movements. All
smoothness metrics have been defined such that higher values of the
metric correspond to smoother movements. A movement was considered to
begin when the speed first became greater than 2% of the peak speed
and was considered to end after the speed dropped and remained below
the 2% threshold again.
Jerk metric. The jerk metric characterizes the average rate
of change of acceleration in a movement. It is calculated by dividing the negative mean jerk magnitude by the peak speed. Taking the negative
of the mean jerk causes increases in the jerk metric to correspond with
increases in smoothness; that is, it transforms the jerk metric from a
measure of "nonsmoothness" into a measure of smoothness. Dividing
the jerk magnitude by peak speed is identical to first normalizing
x and y velocities by the peak speed and then
calculating jerk. Normalizing mean jerk in this way made the metric a
measure of smoothness only and did not confound it with changes in
overall movement speed. Although the other four measures have no units
associated with them, the jerk metric has units of
1/s2. The other four metrics
each quantify some shape characteristic of the speed curve thought to
be related to smoothness, and hence can remain dimensionless. The jerk
metric, however, is based directly on a mathematical definition of
smoothness and by definition must carry units.
Speed metric. The speed metric is the normalized mean speed
(i.e., the mean of the speed divided by the peak speed). Early in
recovery, subjects' movements appear to be composed of a series of
short, episodic submovements. The resulting speed profile has a series
of peaks with deep valleys in between, representing complete or
near-complete stops between each apparent submovement (Fig. 2). The mean speed of such a movement is
much less than its peak. In this case, the normalized mean speed is
relatively low, particularly when the interval between submovements is
significant. However, as subjects recover, submovements tend to have
shorter and less complete breaks between them, resulting in speed
profiles with shallower valleys between peaks. The normalized mean
speed for these movements is significantly higher.

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Figure 2.
Simulated versus actual speed profiles.
a-d, Progressive blending of two minimum-jerk curves at
various states of blending (T). See Materials and
Methods for a detailed description of the simulation.
e-h, Actual patient speed profiles. e
and f are taken from the first and last therapy sessions
of an inpatient; g and h are taken from
the first and last therapy sessions of an outpatient. Simulated speed
profiles qualitatively resemble the actual patient data.
a contains two distinct speed peaks, just as the patient
speed profile e. Continuing down the
columns, b and f are
qualitatively similar, c somewhat resembles
g, and d is similar to h.
Progression from the first to the last therapy sessions qualitatively
suggests an increase in submovement blending. In addition, the
movements of the subject that is longer poststroke
(Outpatient) have characteristics of more highly blended
submovements compared with those of the inpatient.
|
|
Mean arrest period ratio. Early in recovery, it is common
for subjects to move in an episodic manner, stopping multiple times before reaching their objective. A speed profile resulting from this
type of movement will have many intervals of zero velocity. However, as
subjects reach their goal more directly, without unnecessary stops, the
speed profiles will tend to spend less time near zero speed.
"Movement Arrest Period Ratio" (MAPR), as described by Beppu et al.
(1984)
, quantifies this change; it is the proportion of time that
movement speed exceeds a given percentage of peak speed. By nature, the
MAPR with a low threshold is less likely to be informative when
studying movements that are close to normal. However, outpatients'
movements in this study, although better than those of inpatients, are
still far from normal. They move at approximately one-half the speed of
healthy subjects and show significantly nonstraight paths. The MAPR
threshold selected in this analysis was 10%.
Peaks metric. The number of peaks in a speed profile has
been used to quantify smoothness in healthy subjects (Brooks et al., 1973
; Fetters and Todd, 1987
) and in stroke patients (Kahn et al.,
2001
). Fewer peaks in speed represent fewer periods of acceleration and
deceleration, making a smoother movement. In this study, the peaks
metric is taken to be the negative of the number of peaks to relate
increases in the peaks metric to increases in smoothness.
"Tent" metric. The tent metric is the ratio of the area
under the speed curve to the area under a curve "stretched" over
the top of it. It is based on a graphical analysis of the difference between a speed profile and a similarly scaled, single-peaked speed profile (i.e., a speed profile with a single acceleration and a
single deceleration phase). An example of a tent curve is shown in
Figure 3.

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Figure 3.
A constructed tent profile. A subject's speed
profile is superimposed with the corresponding tent profile constructed
during the calculation of the tent metric. It should be noted that,
unlike the other metrics, the tent metric is sensitive to
"permutations." Consider two movements, each of which have four
peaks, two large and one small. In one movement, the peaks are ordered
(Large 1, Small 1, Small 2, and Large 2) with periods of no movement in
between, and in the second movement, peaks are ordered (Small 1, Large
1, Large 2, and Small 2). The tent metric will show higher smoothness
in the second movement.
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|
Statistical tests. Using linear regression, a line was fit
to each of the smoothness metrics over the course of therapy for each
subject, and the confidence interval for the slope was determined. See
Press et al. (1992)
for a detailed mathematical description. Student's
t tests were also performed to compare changes in each of
the smoothness metrics in acute and chronic populations.
Simulation. To test whether changes in the smoothness of
movements made by recovering stroke patients were attributable to progressive blending of submovements, a simulation of submovement blending was performed. A simulated movement was composed of two minimum-jerk speed profiles of the same amplitude and width, initiated an interval T apart, as shown in Figure 2a-d.
Blending was simulated by performing scalar summation of the
overlapping portion of the speed profiles (Morasso and Mussa-Ivaldi,
1982
) as opposed to vector summation (Flash and Henis, 1991
). Note that
in the case of straight line movement, the two summing modalities are equivalent.
As T is varied, the extent of overlap of the two submovement
speed curves varies as well, although the net displacement of the
simulated movement remains constant, consistent with the
fixed-distance, point-to-point movements required by the experimental
task. Sample speed profiles from subjects shown in Figure
2e-h lend support to this description of movement. The
sample movement taken from the inpatient's first day of therapy is
clearly divided into two stages, with the subject coming to a complete
stop in between them. The movement taken from the inpatient's last day
of therapy shows a speed profile with shallower valleys between the
peaks. As interpreted by the simulation, the submovements are more
completely blended together than those of the earlier movement. In
comparison, on the outpatient's final day of therapy, the speed
profile is nearly unimodal. This effect occurs in the simulation as
well when there is such a high degree of blending that individual peaks are no longer distinguishable.
In the simulation, the five smoothness metrics are calculated for many
values of T. To remain consistent with the data-processing methods used on actual subject data, a movement was considered to begin
when the speed first became greater than 2% of the peak speed and to
end after the speed dropped and remained below the 2% threshold again.
 |
RESULTS |
Movement speed and duration
The differences between first-day and last-day values of the fits
for mean speed, peak speed, and movement duration are plotted in Figure
4. Filled circles represent statistical
significance (p
0.05). Subjects' peak speeds
changed significantly in many cases but with no clear trend in the
direction of the change. Significant decreases in peak speed outnumber
increases from 11 to 9. Subjects' mean speeds (total distance traveled
over total movement duration) tended to increase for both inpatients
and outpatients, with the changes being significantly larger in
inpatients (p
0.001). Similarly, subjects'
movement duration tended to decrease for both inpatients and
outpatients, with the changes being significantly larger in inpatients.
This similarity between mean speed and movement duration follows from
the fact that the nominal distance for the movement task remained
constant.

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Figure 4.
Changes in mean and peak speed and movement
duration over the course of therapy for each subject. Filled
circles denote changes that are statistically significant
(p 0.05). Statistical significance
(p value) of the difference between the changes
in smoothness of inpatient (acute) and outpatient (chronic) populations
is shown for each metric. Although mean speed and duration show general
trends, peak speed does not and, in fact, shows more instances of a
decrease than an increase. Open circles denote changes that
did not reach statistical significance.
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|
The trends observed in movement speed and duration are predicted by the
simulation of submovement blending in two of the three cases. As the
simulation progresses, movement duration decreases, which, as mentioned
previously, also yields an increase in mean speed. This correctly
predicts observed trends in mean speed and movement duration. However,
the simulation also predicts an increase in peak speed with increases
in blending at high levels of blending. This pattern is not generally
seen in Figure 4, revealing a limitation of the simplified model of
blending used. However, this property will not affect the results or
interpretation of the smoothness metrics, because all metrics were
chosen in such a way as to be insensitive to scaling of the speed profile.
The existence of strong trends in mean speed and duration indicates
that they might potentially make useful measures of recovery; however,
not every subject follows them. Six subjects showed no significant
change in movement duration. With regard to mean speed, 10 subjects
showed no significant change, and 4 actually showed significant decreases.
Movement smoothness
The differences between first-day and last-day values of the fits
for each smoothness measure are plotted in Figure
5. An increase in any metric indicates an
increase in smoothness, as defined by that metric. Filled circles
represent statistical significance (p
0.05).

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Figure 5.
Changes in each smoothness metric over the course
of therapy for each subject. Increases in smoothness are represented by
positive changes in a smoothness metric in every case. Filled
circles denote changes that are statistically significant
(p 0.05). Statistical significance
(p value) of the difference between the changes
in smoothness of inpatient (acute) and outpatient (chronic) populations
is shown for each metric. Note that, with one exception, every
incidence of a significant decrease in smoothness occurred in the jerk
metric with the inpatient group. Open circles denote changes
that did not reach statistical significance.
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All subjects but one showed a significant increase in one or more of
the smoothness metrics, with 22 subjects showing an improvement in four
or more metrics. The movements of both inpatients and outpatients
tended to get smoother over the course of therapy. The amount of change
in smoothness metrics varied between inpatient and outpatient
populations. For all smoothness metrics except the tent metric, the
amount of change between the two groups differed significantly
(p
0.0001). In the speed metric, MAPR, and
the peaks metric, inpatients showed greater increases in smoothness than outpatients. However, inpatients tended to show decreases in
smoothness as measured by the jerk metric, whereas outpatients tended
to show increases.
As shown in Table 1, inpatients and outpatients had a wide range of
Fugl-Meyer scores both at the beginning and at the end of therapy. On
average, however, inpatients began therapy lower on the Fugl-Meyer scale.
Although the patients' age range was quite large, there was no
statistically significant difference in age between inpatients and
outpatients as groups. Therefore, the observed differences in inpatient
and outpatient performance in four of the five smoothness metrics
cannot be attributed to variations in patients' ages. Correlation
analysis shows that patients' age correlates weakly with their
performance; the highest level of correlation is 0.33, which occurs
with changes in the peaks metric (Table
2).
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Table 2.
Correlation between changes in each smoothness metric and
changes in the Fugl-Meyer score, time after stroke, and subject's
age (Pearson's r)
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|
To test how accurately changes in smoothness were predicted by changes
in clinical scores, correlations were performed between changes in each
of the five smoothness metrics changes in the Fugl-Meyer score and time
after stroke (Table 2). The correlation is appreciable in several cases
(as large as
0.48 for changes in the Fugl-Meyer score and
0.61 for
time after stroke), indicating that changes in smoothness are related
to these clinical scores but only indirectly reflected in them.
In the interest of a clear presentation, the clinical data included
here have intentionally been limited to that which was directly
relevant to the specific topic of the paper. Other aspects of the data
will be discussed in future work.
Simulation results
Figure 6 displays all five
smoothness metrics as a function of simulated submovement blending.
Note that increasing blending corresponds to decreasing T
(i.e., moving from right to left in the figure, rather than left to
right). See Materials and Methods for a detailed description of the
simulation.

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Figure 6.
Comparison of smoothness metrics during the
simulated blending of two minimum-jerk curves. The values of the five
smoothness metrics are shown for a range of values of T.
Translation to the left along the x-axis
represents an increase in submovement blending. Translation up the
y-axis represents an increase in smoothness. Speed
profiles for selected values of T are shown along the
horizontal axis, depicting the state of the simulation
at various degrees of blending.
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|
As T decreases, the metrics generally tend to show an
increase in smoothness. There are a few exceptions to this pattern. The
speed metric, MAPR, the peaks metric, and the tent metric increase all
saturate or peak at low T (high blending). Nevertheless, the
general trend is that these four metrics increase as blending becomes
more complete.
In contrast to the other four metrics, the jerk metric does not
generally increase with blending. Although the jerk metric increases
with increasing blending over the interval 0.12 sec < T < 0.26 sec, it decreases with increasing blending
for T > 0.26 sec. For most of the range considered,
the jerk metric shows that the simulated movements become less smooth
as submovements blend. This behavior is not an artifact of the
minimum-jerk curves used in the simulation; similar behavior was
observed using support-bounded lognormal (Plamondon, 1995
) and Gaussian curves.
It should be noted that the nonmonotonic behavior described here
depends on the form of the jerk metric chosen. As defined in Materials
and Methods, the jerk metric is calculated by taking the negative of
the mean jerk magnitude for the movement and normalizing it by the peak
speed. This is just one of several reasonable ways to define a jerk
metric; for example, the mean jerk magnitude could be normalized by a
variety of quantities (e.g., by mean speed, the cube of mean speed, the
cube of peak speed, duration, and the square of duration) or not at
all. Through serendipity, the particular jerk metric, selected based on
previous use of jerk to describe movement smoothness, was found to
exhibit a nonmonotonicity, a clearly identifiable feature that allowed
for more meaningful comparison between the data and the simulation.
Some variations of jerk metric produce the nonmonotonic behavior (no
normalization, normalization by peak speed, the cube of peak speed,
duration, and the square of duration), but at least one does not
(normalization by the cube of mean speed), whereas normalizing by mean
speed produces a flat region of no change in the jerk metric with blending.
Low jerk is not the only way to quantify smoothness; there are many
other possible smoothness measures. For example, minimum snap (the
fourth time derivative of position) described the kinematics of
point-to-point drawing movements more accurately than minimum jerk
(Plamondon et al., 1993
). However, the measure of the rate of change of
movement acceleration provides a compelling real-world description of
smoothness and offers several advantages: analytical tractability,
computational manageability, and theoretical simplicity.
As an aside, it is interesting to note that near T = 0.19 sec, the peaks metric drops briefly. This occurs because there is a small range of T for which the composite curve, a blend of
two submovements, has three peaks. See Figure 2c for an
illustration of this phenomenon. This counter-intuitive result, that
the sum of two single-peaked curves produces a triple-peaked composite, emphasizes the difficulty of reliably identifying submovements underlying continuous motions. Although this phenomenon is dependent on
the nature of the submovement shape (it does not occur when using
Gaussian-shaped submovements, for instance), it is worthy of
consideration. It raises questions about the validity of common methods
for submovement identification that rely on counting speed peaks or on
using speed peak locations to initialize local minimization algorithms.
Reliable methods for identifying submovements are a topic of ongoing
research and will be more thoroughly addressed in future work.
 |
DISCUSSION |
Movement smoothness increases during recovery
Subjects' increased movement smoothness raises the following
question: is the tendency to make movements with smooth, symmetric, and
bell-shaped speed profiles an epiphenomenon of musculoskeletal dynamics, or is it the result of learned motor behavior? To a limited
extent, movement smoothness is a natural consequence of the low-pass
filtering properties of the neural, muscular, and skeletal systems.
Krylow and Rymer (1997)
demonstrated this phenomenon, showing that a
simple train of electrical pulses produced a movement with a smooth
acceleration phase. However, it is notable that the complete movement
had a highly asymmetric speed profile, quite unlike normal human
movement, indicating that some form of neural coordination (e.g.,
appropriately timed recruitment of agonist and antagonist muscle
groups) would be necessary to produce the approximately symmetric speed
profiles typically observed.
Studies of development and recovery from neural injury strongly suggest
that smoothness is a result of learned coordination. Infants'
movements have been shown to become more smooth (in the sense of having
fewer speed peaks) as motor control improves (von Hofsten, 1991
). This
indicates that movement smoothness is a result of a learned,
coordinative process rather than a natural consequence of the structure
of the neuromuscular system. Additionally, there is evidence that the
segmented nature of stroke patients' arm movements can be attributed
to a deficit in interjoint coordination (Levin, 1996
). Taken with our
observation that smoothness increases with recovery, the conclusion
that smooth movement is a result of well developed coordination seems inescapable.
Evidence for discrete submovements
The "V"-shape of the jerk metric curve in Figure 6 predicts
that subjects with poorer blending (on the right half of the V) will
show decreases in jerk-based smoothness as they recover, whereas
subjects with more complete blending (on the left half of the V) will
show increases in jerk-based smoothness as they continue to recover.
This is reflected clearly in the fact that exclusively inpatient
subjects showed significant decreases in the jerk metric, whereas
outpatients, who are presumably closer to their asymptote of recovery,
showed only increases.
A second prediction of the curves in Figure 6 is that subjects with
poorer blending will show marked increases in the other four smoothness
metrics as they recover, whereas subjects with more complete blending
will show only modest increases as the metrics saturate or peak. This
is shown by the fact that increases in smoothness are significantly
lower for outpatients than inpatients as measured by MAPR, the peaks
metric, and the speed metric. The fact that submovement blending can
explain the observed behaviors of the several smoothness metrics we
considered lends support to the theory that movement is composed of
discrete submovements.
Could the improvement in motion smoothness reflect peripheral factors,
such as restoring the capability of the system to recruit a
sufficiently large number of motor units? If impaired patients were
only limited by the magnitude of their neural activation signals, and
this quantity increased over the course of recovery, then this theory
would predict an increase in peak speed of the movements as well. The
data do not support this hypothesis, however. More subjects show peak
speed decreases than show increases.
Jerk as a smoothness metric
The fact that many subjects showed an increase in the jerk metric
during recovery highlights a distinction between jerk-based notions of
smoothness and submovement blending. Care should be taken when assuming
that less smooth movements (as measured with jerk) are more impaired or
less skilled. The counterintuitive behavior of the jerk metric in the
data and in simulation suggests that, at least during poststroke
recovery, jerk minimization may not be the primary criterion governing
refinements in movement patterns.
The fact that the jerk metric reports a higher degree of smoothness
with very low blending than with a moderate amount of blending follows
from the definition of the metric. High smoothness corresponds to low
average jerk; when a simulated movement consists of two submovements
separated by a large period of rest, average jerk will be relatively
low, and smoothness therefore is high. And as the two submovements
become more blended, they begin to approach each other, and the period
of rest is shortened. This increases average jerk, decreasing smoothness.
Applications of submovements
Just as measurements of jerk have allowed identification of
presymptomatic individuals with Huntington's disease when clinical measurements have not (Smith et al., 2000
), the high resolution and
specificity of other kinematic measures may allow observation of other
previously unobservable phenomena. Such measures would serve to
complement time-tested clinical scales, such as the Fugl-Meyer. Several
research groups have used kinematic and force measures to quantify
movement deficits in stroke patients (Wing et al., 1990
; Ada et al.,
1993
; Trombly, 1993
; Levin, 1996
; Lum et al., 1999
; Kahn et al., 2001
).
Our results extend their work by showing clear increases in smoothness
in both acute and chronic populations, even in subjects who did not
show an increase on the Fugl-Meyer scale. Measurement of smoothness may
provide a meaningful, objective quantification of motor performance
that could be used to augment clinical evaluations. Alternatively, to
the extent that smoothness is a result of submovement blending, direct
estimation of submovement blending characteristics may provide an even
more intuitive and robust measure of recovery.
The existence of submovements might indicate a discrete internal
representation of motor commands. Strong direct evidence for discrete
movement primitives in frog wiping reflexes has been shown (Giszter and
Kargo, 2000
; Kargo and Giszter, 2000
) in both force profiles and EMG
measurements. Physiological evidence for discrete submovements has been
reported in healthy human subjects as well; in slow finger movements,
Vallbo and Wessberg (1993)
showed both discrete kinematic jumps in
finger position as well as synchronized pulses of EMG activity in the
finger flexors and extensors. If it is shown to be feasible, locating
and measuring this internal coding of motor commands could lead to
insight into the nature of human motor behavior and motor system
pathologies. A similar coding of movement may be used in
neural-machine interfaces (Wiener, 1961
). A control system based on
discrete submovements requires much less information to be transferred
(i.e., lower average communication bandwidth) between the controller
and the system being controlled. Initial experiments into
brain-computer interfaces are promising but have shown very limited
bandwidth capabilities (Lauer et al., 2000
). Using discrete feedforward control commands may make practical applications of neural interfaces realizable.
It should be noted that other, nondiscrete models may be capable of
describing decreasingly segmented behavior. However, to be fully
successful, a model of recovery must produce movements that have
significant periods of rest, as is often observed in stroke patients.
For example, a continuous forward and inverse adaptive model pair
described by Bhusan and Shadmehr (1999)
incorporates time delays
representative of those in the visual and spinal feedback loops and
predicts segmented behavior when learning to move in a novel force
field. It predicts that the segmentation will decrease as the models
become trained but is unlikely to predict periods of rest.
As an aside, the behavior of the Bhusan and Shadmehr (1999)
model is
attributable to its structure and to the existence of time delays
rather than to its continuous nature. A similar model could be
implemented in discrete terms equally plausibly. A discrete submovement
model of this structure is much more likely to reproduce the salient
characteristics of movement during stroke recovery, including both
segmentation and periods of rest.
There are control system applications for submovements as well.
Transmission delays tend to have a destabilizing effect on closed-loop
control systems and often exist in teleoperated systems. The discrete
nature of motor commands may be a mechanism by which control of
movement is stabilized despite
100 msec delays in neural pathways and
in the visual feedback loop; the CNS may be stably "teleoperating"
the periphery using submovements. Telerobotic systems in space,
medicine, and hazardous material handling that adopt control
architectures based on discrete feedforward commands may become more
stable, increasing performance. In addition, where the delay in these
systems is caused by bandwidth limitations, the concise nature of
discrete command representation would decrease average bandwidth
requirements and further improve system performance. As an added
benefit, control system resources dedicated previously to continuously
monitoring input and output commands would be freed to execute other tasks.
These benefits would not be without cost. By their nature, discrete
controllers have periods of time in which they gather information but
do not act on it. This results in a delay, a scaled-up version of the
discrete-time effect encountered in digital systems, which is likely to
degrade performance. (Both optimal and robust control theory use
near-continuous time controllers and predict a degradation of
performance when time discretization becomes large.) However, the fact
that discrete controllers exhibit less than optimal performance may not
necessarily be a flaw but rather a feature. Optimality denotes, by
definition, fragility; any slight change in the system degrades
performance. This is in contrast to the human motor control system,
which appears to be, above all else, robust.
 |
FOOTNOTES |
Received Dec. 13, 2001; revised June 28, 2002; accepted July 1, 2002.
This work was supported by National Institutes of Health Grants
R01-HD36827 and R01-HD37397, the Burke Medical Research Institute, and
a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship (B.R.).
Correspondence should be addressed to Brandon Rohrer, Sandia National
Laboratories, P.O. Box 5800, MS-1010, Albuquerque, NM 87185-1010. E-mail: brrohre{at}sandia.gov.
 |
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