IDENTIFYING CONTROL MECHANISMS FOR POSTURAL BEHAVIORS

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We are proposing an interdisciplinary meeting to be held on November 6-7, 1998 as a Satellite to the Society for Neuroscience meeting. The objective of the proposed meeting is to promote discussion about current research methods and results in the field of postural control. Our goal is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of current experimental design, and to begin to identify questions that need to be addressed in order to progress our knowledge in this field. By including graduate students and younger scientists from several disciplines, we are hoping that the participants will consider the many components of postural control (e.g., biomechanics, neurophysiology, cognitive planning) in their discussion. Our plan is that some consensus about the definition of postural control, the relevance of current research results, and a potential direction for future questions for research in the area of postural control will emerge in order to move the field forward into the next generation of research questions. Topics to be covered include the neural pathway characteristics that generate or contribute to postural behaviors; reactive and predictive postures; the role of perception; the relevance of animal and clinical models for human postural control; the influence of varying task parameters; how the neuromotor system recognizes mechanical laws and multisegmental relations; whether the concept of center of mass is a controlled variable or a way of measuring postural behaviors; the relationship between voluntary actions and postural reactions; the parameters that need to be considered in modeling postural behaviors; and central nervous system processing of multitask information. Speakers and moderators will include researchers recognized as some of the leaders in the field of postural research. Speakers will be encouraged to present overviews of their topic area rather than talks motivated by their own data in order to reduce the tendency toward defending a particular finding or hypothesis. A poster session and workshops will provide opportunities for all participants to share data and opinions about the subject matter. Proceedings, including the workshop discussions, will be published.