Neurobiology: Making smooth moves
In making any movement (say, for instance, reaching for an object) our limbs usually take a smooth trajectory. That has been taken to mean that the body's motor system minimizes jerkiness. Instead, however, smoothness may be a by-product of a more fundamental computational goal of the motor system -- that of balancing speed and accuracy when activity-dependent ‘noise' in the neural control systems is taken into account.