We review evidence that the resource-rationality principle generalizes to human movement control. Optimization of the use of limited neurocomputational resources is described by the inclusion of the “neurocomputational cost” of sensory information processing and decision making in the optimality criterion of movement control. A resulting tendency to decrease this cost can account for various phenomena observed during goal-directed movements.

A more general form of optimality approach applied to the entire behavioral paradigm should be used instead of abandoning the optimality approach. Adding the cost of information processing to the optimality criterion and taking into account some other recently proposed aspects of decision optimization could substantially increase the explanatory power of an optimality approach to modeling perceptual decision making.

Vaesen suggests that motor control is not among the primary origins of the uniqueness of human tool use. However, recent findings show that cognitive processes involved in control of human limb movements may be much more sophisticated than it was believed previously. The sophistication of movement control may substantially contribute to the uniqueness of humans in tool use.

In the behavioral literature on human movement, a distinction is made between the learning of parameters and the learning of new movement forms or topologies. Whereas the target articles by Thach, Smith, and Houk et al. provide evidence for cerebellar involvement in parametrization learning and adaptation, the evidence in favor of its involvement in the generation of new movement patterns is less straightforward. A case is made for focusing more attention on the latter issue in the future. This would directly help to bridge the gap between current neurophysiological approaches to the role of the cerebellum and the behavioral expressions of human motor learning, [HOUK et al.; SMITH; THACH]

Whereas Latash & Anson (L&A) have underscored the rearrangement or setting of new priorities, our primary focus is on preexisting central nervous system (CNS) priorities that become even more prevalent and intrusive under pathological conditions. The adaptations observed in the disordered motor system can often be understood against the backdrop of these primary CNS constraints. Even though this perspective has not been specifically addressed in the target article, we consider it complementary and not necessarily in opposition to L&A's primary thesis.