Control of Movement in Health and Disease

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The long-term goal of my research program is to understand how the nervous system generates movements. Ultimately, my goal is to apply this knowledge towards developing intelligent devices that very naturally interact with the nervous system. The nervous system is capable of producing graceful movements that effortlessly adapt to our environment. Multiple neural components that are distributed in different parts of the brain are responsible for this elegance in movement generation. While these components have been extensively studied, their functional organization and connectivity remains unclear. Also, their involvement in learning and adapting to new environments remains unclear. Understanding how these neural components are connected and the role each plays in generating movements in changing environments will allow us in the future to develop more intelligent robots. It will also allow us to figure out how devices and humans can work together as one continuous entity. ******In this research program we will study how each of the neural components functions on its own and how it participates in adapting to new environments by using models of disrupted neural connectivity. There models isolate one or more components from each other. We will see how this isolation affects how movements are generated and what the movements look like. We will then apply changes to the environment in which the movements are generated, and see how the isolation affects how well the nervous system learns to adapt to the new environments. ******The knowledge we gain from this work will be extremely valuable. Knowing how people learn and how they adapt to their environment will teach us the primary principles that allow people to interact so well with a device, such that the device feels as though it is part of the body. Understanding these principles will help us design better devices in the future and make sure that these devices help people improve their abilities.