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The
central interest of research in the Action Lab is the control and
coordination
of goal-directed human behavior. What organizational principles are at
work in
movement coordination? What perceptual information is used to
coordinate the
complex neuromuscular structure? The theoretical framework that
pervades our
studies interprets the actor in the environment as a dynamical system,
which is
high-dimensional, nonlinear, and capable of producing coordinated and
adaptive
behavior. More specifically, our research agenda focuses on single- and
multi-
joint human movements in perceptually specified tasks. We pursue a
three-pronged
research strategy consisting of: (1) an empirical component with
behavioral
experiments on human subjects, (2) theoretical work which develops
mathematical
models for movement generation on the basis of coupled dynamical
systems, and
(3) brain imaging studies that investigate the cerebral activity
accompanying
movement. More recently, we have extended these experimental paradigms
to
neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease and split-brain
patients, and
the elderly.
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Selected Recent Publications:
Sternad,D.,
Abe, M.O., Hu, X., & Muller, H. (2011). Neuromotor noise, error
tolerance and velocity- dependent costs in skilled performance. PLoS Computational Biology, 7(9), e1002159. Sternad, D., Park, S., Muller, H., & Hogan, N. (2010). Coordinate dependence of variability analysis. PLoS Computational Biology, 6(4), e1000751. Ronsse, R., Wei, K., & Sternad, D. (2010). Optimal control of a hybrid rhythmic-discrete task: the bouncing ball revised. Journal of Neurophysiology, 103, 2482-2493. Raftery, A. Cusumano,
J., & Sternad, D. (2008). Chaotic frequency scaling in a
coupled
oscillator model for free rhythmic actions. Neural
Computation, 20, 205-226. Wei,
K., Dijkstra, T. M. H., & Sternad, D. (2007). Passive stability
and
active control in a rhythmic task. Journal
of Neurophysiology, 98, 5,
2633-2646. Schaal S., Sternad D., Osu R. & Kawato M. (2004). Rhythmic arm movements are not discrete.
Nature Neuroscience 7,10, 1136-1143.
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