Neuroscience Perspectives on Adaptive Manual Control with Pursuit Displays

Cyberneticists develop mathematical human control models which are used to tune manual control systems and understand human performance limits. Neuroscientists explore the physiology and circuitry of the central nervous system to understand how the brain works. Both research human visuomotor control tasks, such as the pursuit tracking task. In this paper we discuss some commonalities and differences in both approaches to better understand the adapting human controller. Special attention is given to Adaptive Model Theory, which studied adaptive human control using several linear and nonlinear control engineering techniques. The insights gained yield schemes and concepts which pave the way for key future work on this topic.