Anticipatory postural muscle activation is based on which type of control?

• A. Feedback control
• B. Reactive control
• C. Voluntary planning
• D. Feedforward control

Answer: (D)

Anticipatory postural muscle activation relies on feedforward control: the nervous system predicts the upcoming disturbance from a planned movement and pre-activates trunk and leg muscles before the action begins to keep the body's center of mass stable. This predictive adjustment happens in advance, not in response to actual sensory feedback after the perturbation occurs. It’s automatic and learned, using internal models to estimate the effect of the movement, rather than being a purely reactive correction or a conscious planning step. For example, when you start to lift a heavy object, you pre-activate core and leg muscles to counter the expected shift in balance.