ELSC Seminar Series

Neural motor control studies focus on characterizing human movements and the brain representations of motion production and perception. A key concept in this research field is that although humans and animals display a rich repertoire of motor behaviors, showing considerable variability, both the behavioral and neuronal aspects of movement are highly invariant and can be understood in terms of fundamental organizational principles and geometric symmetries.  Specifically, in my presentation, I will discuss three core topics (1) Motion planning and selection can be investigated by combining optimal control and geometric invariance theories, aiming to describe movement kinematics and timing, mainly illustrating how time may emerge from geometry,  and suggesting that the brain may employ a mixture of several Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometric representations (2) Complex movements are planned and executed using elemental motion primitives and muscular synergies, thus accounting for the observed regularities of inter-segmental coordination and muscle activation patterns. I will then describe how the validity of these concepts and models was assessed in brain imaging and neurophysiological studies, focusing on neural encoding and the brain processes subserving trajectory formation and kinematic and dynamic computations.