Motor Adaptation Through Complexity matching in Harmonised joint action

Objective

Rehabilitation training can enhance the quality of life for people with motor impairments, yet many training programs remain limited in their effectiveness because they overlook the social dimension of human movement. MATCH addresses this problem by studying the potential of an interactive, joint action-based therapy for motor rehabilitation. Central to the project is the design of an innovative ball-on-board paradigm: an experimental task in which participants learn to control a ball rolling on a hand-held board. The task can be performed individually or in dyads, making it possible to study motor learning in both solo and joint action contexts. Using healthy participants, the empirical work will be divided in three phases that each correspond to a distinct research objective. The first phase establishes a conceptual framework for motor learning that is tailored to the demands of rehabilitation practice. Combining expertise of the host and myself, concepts from complexity science are integrated with motor learning theory and the framework will be empirically validated through a solo action experiment. In the second phase, this framework is applied to design an interactive training therapy. A joint action experiment will examine how interacting participants coordinate their movements with one another, with the hypothesis that dyad members will match the complexity of their motor behaviour to each other during the interaction. The third and final phase evaluates the effectiveness of the interactive therapy by testing to what extent a joint action training leads to persistent enhancements in the complexity of an individual’s motor behaviour. This will be investigated in a solo action experiment. Together, MATCH lays the groundwork for a joint action therapy by pioneering the integration of complexity science with movement science. As such, the proposed research is fundamental to the future recovery of patients with stroke, Parkinson’s disease or spinal cord injury.