A subsystem identification technique for modeling control strategies used by humans

This paper presents evidence in support of the internal model hypothesis of neuroscience. Specifically, we present results from a study that includes 10 human subjects and is designed to explore the internal model hypothesis. A new system identification method is presented for composite systems that include multiple unknown subsystems whose input and output signals may be inaccessible (i.e., unmeasurable). We use this subsystem identification method to model the control strategies that humans employ. In particular, we identify the feedback and feedforward controllers of the subjects in the experiment. The identified controllers suggest that the subjects learned to use inverse plant dynamics in feedforward.