Science
To some neuroscientists, the brain exists to produce movement and everything else it does should be understood in light of this goal. On this episode, we talk about these "motor chauvinists" and the broader topic of how motor control is studied in neuroscience and artificial intelligence. First we briefly discuss the tangled anatomy of motor control in animals. Then we get into how artificial motor control is done, including optimal feedback control, reinforcement learning, and the six core principles of hierarchical motor control. Finally we relate these principles back to the biology and talk about what the future of the study of motor control needs. Throughout we conduct an experiment on ourselves, reflect on what makes motor outputs different from other tasks, and hear what Alex thinks is undeniably true or undeniably false about the motor system.