ArticleeLife2021
The energetic basis for smooth human arm movements.
Article in eLife, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed.
- The effects of haloperidol on motor vigour and movement fusion during sequential reaching.PloS one · 2025Trial
- How muscle ageing affects rapid goal-directed movement: mechanistic insights from a simple model.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Detection of Feigned Impairment of the Shoulder Due to External Incentives: A Comprehensive Review.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Predictive use of environmental regularities requires action relevance.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Rapid switching of vestibulo-motor pathways through voluntary eyelid closure in primates.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Phase-Specific Biomechanical Characterization of Upper Limb Movements in Stroke.Bioengineering (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- A cup half full: exploring the kinematic consequences of variations in the drinking task protocol.Journal of rehabilitation medicine · 2025Article
- Efficient elastic tissue motions indicate general motor skill.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Behavioural energetics in human locomotion: how energy use influences how we move.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Review
- Article
- Muscular, temporal, and spatial responses to shoulder exosuit assistance during functional tasks.Journal of neurophysiology · 2024Article
- Finding the rhythm: Humans exploit nonlinear intrinsic dynamics of compliant systems in periodic interaction tasks.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Article
- Disentangling the effects of metabolic cost and accuracy on movement speed.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Inferring control objectives in a virtual balancing task in humans and monkeys.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Reoptimization of single-joint motor patterns to non-Earth gravity torques induced by a robotic exoskeleton.iScience · 2023Article
- The nervous system tunes sensorimotor gains when reaching in variable mechanical environments.iScience · 2023Article
- Humans plan for the near future to walk economically on uneven terrain.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Body Mechanics, Optimality, and Sensory Feedback in the Human Control of Complex Objects.Neural computation · 2023Article
- The sensorimotor system modulates muscular co-contraction relative to visuomotor feedback responses to regulate movement variability.Journal of neurophysiology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The central nervous system plans human reaching movements with stereotypically smooth kinematic trajectories and fairly consistent durations. Smoothness seems to be explained by accuracy as a primary movement objective, whereas duration seems to economize energy expenditure. But the current understanding of energy expenditure does not explain smoothness, so that two aspects of the same movement are governed by seemingly incompatible objectives. Here, we show that smoothness is actually economical, because humans expend more metabolic energy for jerkier motions. The proposed mechanism is an underappreciated cost proportional to the rate of muscle force production, for calcium transport to activate muscle. We experimentally tested that energy cost in humans (N = 10) performing bimanual reaches cyclically. The empirical cost was then demonstrated to predict smooth, discrete reaches, previously attributed to accuracy alone. A mechanistic, physiologically measurable, energy cost may therefore explain both smoothness and duration in terms of economy, and help resolve motor redundancy in reaching movements.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.