Principal Investigator
Research Projects
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Biomimetic microstimulation to repair focal nervous system injury
Intracortical microstimulation (ICMS) can be used to deliver information into the nervous system. Recorded neuronal spike trains played back as ICMS might deliver information that mimics natural inputs to a cortical region. We are investigating whether such biomimetic ICMS can substitute for information lost due to nervous system injury. More info...
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Controlling a Dexterous Prosthesis with Neural Signals
We are participating in the Revolutionizing Prosthetics project organized by the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University. This project aims to develop a neurally driven upper extremity prosthesis with a dexterous hand. Our lab is contributing to development of methods for controlling the dexterous hand from neural signals. More info...
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Dimensionality reduction in the cortico-muscular system controlling the hand
Although the hand has 16 joints that provide 23 degrees-of-freedom (DOFs), in most hand movements these joints/DOFs do not move independently. Because multiple joints move together, such as the bending of all three joints of a finger at the same time, descriptive analysis can reduce most of the hand’s motion to far less than 23 DOFs. But does the nervous system actually make use of such reduced dimensionality in controlling real hand movements? More info...
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Variation in the throughput from single cortico-motoneuronal cells to electromyographic activity
Certain neurons in the primary motor cortex make direct, monosynaptic connections to spinal motoneurons that drive hand and finger muscles. One might think that these constant connections to motoneurons would provide a constant throughput from the cortical neuron to muscle activity. Recently, however, we found that such throughput can change rapidly. Now we are investigating factors that might produce such rapid changes. More info...
