Experimental Studies of Behavioral Attractors and Their Evolution with Learning

Only a few stable movement patterns may be produced initially in rhythmic bimanual coordination. Through a collective variable, relative phase, these patterns define attractors of the system’s intrinsic dynamics. By visually requiring a relative phase, behavioral information is introduced into the dynamics, which attracts the system’s behavior toward the required phasing pattern. Learning is the process by which such environmental behavioral information becomes memorized. The experimental rationale is to systematically probe the current collective variable dynamics while a phasing pattern is practiced in order to observe the evolution of the attractor layout as a new task is learned. Several dynamical processes associated with learning are identified. Pattern stability depends on whether behavioral information competes or cooperates with the intrinsic dynamics. A coordination pattern is learned to the extent that the initial dynamics are modified in the direction of the required pattern. If these practice-induced alterations of the dynamics are qualitative, learning takes the form of a nonequilibrium phase transition.