Barbara Natell – Creative Interventions in Motor Control & Learning: Promoting Posture, Movement, & Fine Motor Skills

Creative Interventions in Motor Control & Learning: Promoting Posture, Movement, & Fine Motor Skills – Barbara Natell

This course will guide clinicians through the development of treatment approaches that integrate multiple perspectives of motor control and learning. The three major factors of motor learning – environmental conditions, cognitive processes, and movement organization through multisensory integration – will be applied to guide motor learning techniques. Design interventions that use the evidence to support greater retention and learning that is realized by patients as enhanced functional mobility. Hands-on experiences will allow you to collaborate on development of effective, holistic interventions that promote optimal function and skills.

1. Summarize between changes in motor skill performance and motor learning
2. Discuss the strengths, limitations, and clinical implications of motor control and learning theories
3. Explore current evidence related to motor control and learning and identify key parameters that can influence therapeutic outcomes
4. Assess conditions of individuals, tasks, or of contexts that interfere with performance related to postural stability, mobility, and fine motor skills
5. Design environments, contexts, and strategies for communication and physical handling to best facilitate optimal motor learning across a functional continuum

DEFINE MOTOR CONTROL AND MOTOR LEARNING

EVOLUTION OF THEORIES OF MOTOR CONTROL

• Reflex integration
• Hierarchical Theory
• Motor Programming Theories
• Systems Theory
• Dynamical Action Theory
• Ecological Theory

ADDRESSING FACTORS INFLUENCING THE HABILITATION AND REHABILITATION OF MOTOR CONTROL ALONG A FUNCTIONAL CONTINUUM

• The Individual
  • Action
    • Degrees of freedom problem
    • Phase shifts
    • Feedback and feedforward mechanisms
    • Neuromuscular, musculoskeletal, and cardiopulmonary
    • Motor maps and plasticity
    • Lab: Physical handling techniques to promote stability, mobility, and fine motor skills
  • Perception
    • Integration of the senses and development of mindfulness
    • Body image, body scheme, and position in space
    • Emotion and the development of “flow”
    • Lab: Design interventions to facilitate increased awareness of body scheme, the orienting response, and awareness of the spatial envelope
  • Cognition
    • Intention, attention, anticipation
    • Timing and rhythm
    • Effects of mental practice
    • Lab: Using music and rhythm to influence enhanced motor control

• The Task: Activity analysis along a functional continuum
  • Mobility
  • Stability
  • Fine motor control
• The Environment
  • Control parameters
  • Grading regulatory and non-regulatory factors
  • Effects of natural environments
  • Lab: Developing strategies for a client-centered environment integrating theoretical perspectives