What Is Motor Control?

Learning Motor Control

Skills are learned little by little at first, through practice. Next the brain consolidates the learning so that if you return to the training weeks after you have stopped, you'll find that you have improved during the lay-off. The biggest gains are made after learning and then getting a good night's sleep. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health in collaboration with Columbia University and John Hopkins University found that a mild electrical charge to the head increased the ability of people to learn complex motor skills.

Gross motor skills are the first motor skills we learn as babies. Gross motor skills involve controlling the large muscles of the body. Such skills include walking, sitting and crawling. Many of the developmental milestones parents look forward to seeing in their baby are gross motor skills, which tend to happen in a certain order. For instance, a child must pull himself up to stand while holding on to furniture before he can walk. After a child has some of these skills under his belt, the brain starts working more on learning fine motor control.

Fine motor control is possible because of an area of the brain's cortex with cells that directly control the motor neuron cells, those cells in the spinal cord that create the muscle control responsible for movement of the hands. The small motor control that this system allows enables humans to use tools. This area is only present in humans, some kinds of monkeys and tool-using great apes. The cells in the cortex are called cortico-motoneuronal cells, or CM for short.

The ability of the CM cells of the brain's cortex to directly control the motor neurons that allows for fine motor control develops over the first two years of life, making it possible for you to learn complex movements like playing the piano or typing. In babies, developmental milestones that show the progress of fine motor control include the ability to grab, to pinch and to drink from a cup. Older children learn fine motor skills, such as writing and using scissors.

The brain's motor cortex is the area that controls motor movements. The region controlling the fine motor skills controls the muscles of the elbow, shoulder and hands. This part of the brain evolved later than the rest of the motor cortex in humans and is next to the older part of the motor cortex that control the other muscles used during voluntary movement. The motor cortex is at the back of the frontal lobe. Other areas of the brain also contribute to movement, providing sense information, for instance, to allow you to make appropriately sized movements within your space.