Probing the Control Processes of the Motor System

Robot-assisted rehabilitation is often found to help in recovery, but its use is often experimental or limited to clinical trials. This paradox is partly explained by the difficulty in bridging the gap between the score on a robot-assisted exercise and the control processes that mediate the measured performance. Building upon recent computational model of motor control, this paper highlights the potential benefits of a multitask approach for evaluating sensorimotor control processes. The approach is illustrated with the results from normal and pathological sensorimotor behavior in humans.