This chapter begins with a brief history of feedback control and a review of classical control
theory. It then shows how that theory informs the general understanding of the control of limb …

Recent experiments suggest a simple relationship between posture and movement. Posture
appears to result from the CNS setting the activity levels of agonist and antagonist muscles …

When animals walk overground, mechanical stimuli activate various receptors located in
muscles, joints and skin. Afferents from these mechanoreceptors project to neuronal …

The sections in this article are:

Dr. PR Burgess organized a Society for Neuroscience symposium in 1992 to discuss his
contention that “You can only control what you sense.” The question is, what is being …

Rapid, automatic postural responses are evoked whenever there is an external perturbation
to a body segment that causes disequilibrium or alters postural orientation (Horak and …

The concept of feedback, as applied to motor control, usually suggests an image of sensory
receptors on the periphery supplying information to the central nervous system (CNS) for the …

The general problem of" control" may be divided into two main categories, often designated
open-loop and closed-loop (see Fig. 1). We adopt here the convention of using" controller" …

Publisher Summary Studies on the control of posture and locomotion over the past century
have taken a variety of experimental perspectives, including neurophysiological …

It is difficult to grasp how the human nervous system is able to keep up with the requirements
of walking, reaching, or even doing something as seemingly simple as standing itself. The …