V K Jirsa, P Fink, P Foo, and J A Kelso (2000)
Parametric stabilization of biological coordination: a theoretical model
JOURNAL OF BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS 26(2):85–112.
In human coordination studies information from the environment may
not only pace rhythmic behavior, but also contribute to the observed
dynamics, e.g. a phenomenon known as anchoring in the literature.
For the paradigmatic case of bimanual coordination we study these
contributions mathematically and develop a model of the interaction
between the limb's intrinsic dynamics and environmental signals
from a metronome in terms of oscillator equations. We discuss additive
versus multiplicative metronome impact and show the latter to be
more appropriate. Our model describes single limb-metronome interaction,
as well as multilimb-metronome interaction. We establish a parametric
stabilization term which preserves the characteristics of bimanual
coordination and additionally explains the varying stability of
movement under different metronome conditions, the frequency dependence
of the amplitudes of finger movements, anchoring phenomena and
geometries of phase space trajectories. Predictions of our model
are tested against experimental observations.,