Action and perception at the level of synergies

Meeting the challenge of assembling coherent organizations of very many muscles characterizes a functional level of biological movement systems referred to as the level of muscular-articular links or synergies. The present article examines the issues confronting the forming, regulating, and ordering of synergies and the hypothesized principles, both classical and contemporary, which resolve them. A primary goal of the article is to highlight the abstractness of the concepts and tools required to understand the level's action-perception competence. Coverage is given to symmetry groups, task space, order parameters, metastability, biotensegrity, allometric scaling, and impredicative definitions. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.