In neuroscience and motor control, the degrees of freedom problem or motor equivalence problem states that there are multiple ways for humans or animals to perform a movement in order to achieve the same goal. In other words, under normal circumstances, no simple one-to-one correspondence exists between a motor problem (or task) and a motor solution to the problem. The motor equivalence problem was first formulated by the Russian neurophysiologist Nikolai Bernstein: "It is clear that the basic difficulties for co-ordination consist precisely in the extreme abundance of degrees of freedom, with which the [nervous] centre is not at first in a position to deal."
Although the question of how the nervous system selects which particular degrees of freedom (DOFs) to use in a movement may be a problem to scientists, the abundance of DOFs is almost certainly an advantage to the mammalian and the invertebrate nervous systems. The human body has redundant anatomical DOFs (at muscles and joints), redundant kinematic DOFs (movements can have different trajectories, velocities, and accelerations and yet achieve the same goal), and redundant neurophysiological DOFs (multiple motoneurons synapsing on the same muscle, and vice versa). How the nervous system "chooses" a subset of these near-infinite DOFs is an overarching difficulty in understanding motor control and motor learning.
History
The study of motor control historically breaks down into two broad areas: "Western" neurophysiological studies, and "Bernsteinian" functional analysis of movement. The latter has become predominant in motor control, as Bernstein's theories have held up well and are considered founding principles of the field as it exists today.
Pre-Bernstein
In the latter 19th and early 20th centuries, many scientists believed that all motor control came from the spinal cord, as experiments with stimulation in frogs displayed patterned movement ("motor primitives"), and spinalized cats were shown to be able to walk. This tradition was closely tied with the strict nervous system localizationism advocated during that period; since stimulation of the frog spinal cord in different places produced different movements, it was thought that all motor impulses were localized in the spinal cord. However, fixed structure and localizationism were slowly broken down as the central dogma of neuroscience. It is now known that the primary motor cortex and premotor cortex at the highest level are responsible for most voluntary movements. Animal models, though, remain relevant in motor control and spinal cord reflexes and central pattern generators are still a topic of study.
Bernstein
Although Lashley (1933) first formulated the motor equivalence problem, it was Bernstein who articulated the DOF problem in its current form. In Bernstein's formulation, the problem results from infinite redundancy, yet flexibility between movements; thus, the nervous system apparently must choose a particular motor solution every time it acts. In Bernstein's formulation, a single muscle never acts in isolation. Rather, large numbers of "nervous centres" cooperate in order to make a whole movement possible. Nervous impulses from different parts of the CNS may converge on the periphery in combination to produce a movement; however, there is great difficulty for scientists in understanding and coordinating the facts linking impulses to a movement. Bernstein's rational understanding of movement and prediction of motor learning via what we now call "plasticity" was revolutionary for his time.
In Bernstein's view, movements must always reflect what is contained in the "central impulse", in one way or another. However, he recognized that effectors (feed-forward) were not the only important component to movement; feedback was also necessary. Thus, Bernstein was one of the first to understand movement as a closed circle of interaction between the nervous system and the sensory environment, rather than a simple arc toward a goal. He defined motor coordination as a means for overcoming indeterminacy due to redundant peripheral DOFs. With increasing DOFs, it is increasingly necessary for the nervous system to have a more complex, delicate organizational control.
Because humans are adapted to survive, the "most important" movements tend to be reflexes -- pain or defensive reflexes needed to be carried out in very short time scales in order for ancient humans to survive their harsh environment. Most of our movements, though, are voluntary; voluntary control had historically been under-emphasized or even disregarded altogether. Bernstein saw voluntary movements as structured around a "motor problem" where the nervous system needed two factors to act: a full and complete perception of reality, as accomplished by multisensory integration, and objectivity of perception through constant and correct recognition of signals by the nervous system. Only with both may the nervous system choose an appropriate motor solution.
Difficulties
The DOF problem is still a topic of study because of the complexity of the neuromuscular system of the human body. Not only is the problem itself exceedingly difficult to tackle, but the vastness of the field of study makes synthesis of theories a challenge.
Counting degrees of freedom
One of the largest difficulties in motor control is quantifying the exact number of DOFs in the complex neuromuscular system of the human body. In addition to having redundant muscles and joints, muscles may span multiple joints, further complicating the system. Properties of muscle change as the muscle length itself changes, making mechanical models difficult to create and understand. Individual muscles are innervated by multiple nerve fibers (motor units), and the manner in which these units are recruited is similarly complex. While each joint is commonly understood as having an agonist-antagonist pair, not all joint movement is controlled locally. Finally, movement kinematics are not identical even when performing the same motion repeatedly; natural variation in position, velocity, and acceleration of the limb occur even during seemingly identical movements.
Types of studies
Another difficulty in motor control is unifying the different ways to study movements. Three distinct areas in studying motor control have emerged: limb mechanics, neurophysiology, and motor behavior.
Limb mechanics
Studies of limb mechanics focus on the peripheral motor system as a filter which converts patterns of muscle activation into purposeful movement. In this paradigm, the building block is a motor unit (a neuron and all the muscle fibers it innervates) and complex models are built to understand the multitude of biological factors influencing motion. These models become increasingly complicated when multiple joints or environmental factors such as ground reaction forces are introduced.
Neurophysiology
In neurophysiological studies, the motor system is modeled as a distributed, often hierarchical system with the spinal cord controlling the "most automatic" of movements such as stretch reflexes, and the cortex controlling the "most voluntary" actions such as reaching for an object, with the brainstem performing a function somewhere in between the two. Such studies seek to investigate how the primary motor cortex (M1) controls planning and execution of motor tasks. Traditionally, neurophysiological studies have used animal models with electrophysiological recordings and stimulation to better understand human motor control.
Motor behavior
Studies of motor behavior focus on the adaptive and feedback properties of the nervous system in motor control. The motor system has been shown to adapt to changes in its mechanical environment on relatively short timescales while simultaneously producing smooth movements; these studies investigate how this remarkable feedback takes place. Such studies investigate which variables the nervous system controls, which variables are less tightly controlled, and how this control is implemented. Common paradigms of study include voluntary reaching tasks and perturbations of standing balance in humans.
Abundance or redundancy
Finally, the very nature of the DOF problem poses questions. For example, does the nervous system really have difficulty in choosing from DOFs, or is the abundance of DOFs necessary for evolutionary survival? In very extreme movements, humans may exhaust the limits of their DOFs—in these cases, the nervous system only has one choice. Therefore, DOFs are not always infinite. Bernstein has suggested that our vast number of DOFs allows motor learning to take place, wherein the nervous system "explores" the set of possible motor solutions before settling on an optimal solution (learning to walk and ride a bike, for example). Finally, additional DOFs allow patients with brain or spinal cord injury to often retain movement while relying on a reduced set of biomechanical DOFs. Therefore, the "degrees of freedom problem" may be a misnomer and is better understood as the "motor equivalence problem" with redundant DOFs offering an evolutionary solution to this problem.
Hypotheses and proposed solutions
There have been many attempts to offer solutions or conceptual models that explain the DOF problem. One of the first hypotheses was Fitts' Law, which states that a trade-off must occur between movement speed and movement accuracy in a reaching task. Since then, many other theories have been offered.
Optimal control hypothesis
A general paradigm for understanding motor control, optimal control has been defined as "optimizing motor control for a given aspect of task performance," or as a way to minimize a certain "cost" associated with a movement. This "cost function" may be different depending on the task-goal; for example, minimum energy expenditure might be a task-variable associated with locomotion, while precise trajectory and positional control could be a task-variable associated with reaching for an object. Furthermore, the cost function may be quite complex (for instance, it may be a functional instead of function) and be also related to the representations in the internal space. For example, the speech produced by biomechanical tongue models, controlled by the internal model which minimizes the length of the path traveled in the internal space under the constraints related to the executed task (e.g., quality of speech, stiffness of tongue), was found to be quite realistic. In essence, the goal of optimal control is to "reduce degrees of freedom in a principled way." Two key components of all optimal control systems are: a "state estimator" which tells the nervous system about what it is doing, including afferent sensory feedback and an efferent copy of the motor command; and adjustable feedback gains based on task goals. A component of these adjustable gains might be a "minimum intervention principle" where the nervous system only performs selective error correction rather than heavily modulating the entirety of a movement.
Open and closed-loop models
Both open-loop and closed-loop models of optimal control have been studied; the former generally ignores the role of sensory feedback, while the latter attempts to incorporate sensory feedback, which includes delays and uncertainty associated with the sensory systems involved in movement. Open-loop models are simpler but have severe limitations—they model a movement as prerecorded in the nervous system, ignoring sensory feedback, and also fail to model variability between movements with the same task-goal. In both models, the primary difficulty is identifying the cost associated with a movement. A mix of cost variables such as minimum energy expenditure and a "smoothness" function is the most likely choice for a common performance criterion.
Learning and optimal control