Spaital Generalization in Human Movement

According to Shadmehr and Mussa-Ivaldi (1994) and later by Gandolfo, Mussa-Ivaldi and Bizzi, (1996) while learning a motor skill at any given region with a working space  the central nervous system generalizes the acquired skill to the areas that closely simulate  where the action training occurred. This restricted spatial generalization is an important ability in order to avoid the need to train for all possible situations, which could take an infinite amount of time. For example Shadmehr and Mussa-Ivaldi (1994) suggested that when the control of limb movements is learned, the acquired knowledge about the environment and the intrinsic limb parameters must be encoded in the nervous system. However this learned information is not restricted only to the specific movement but is generalized for other movements that are similar (Matsuoka ,1998) The transfer of learned information according to Shadmehr and Mussa-Ivaldi(1994) is termed  generalization and it has been shown to be organized spatially which in-turn has shown to be restricted within the neighbourhood areas of the workspace (Gandolfo, et al, 1996).