Reza Shadmehr PhD
Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Neuroscience
Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Neuroscience
Our goal is to understand movement control in humans. Our approach stresses a close integration of the viewpoints from robotics and control theory with neuroscience to provide a unique perspective on the nature of the biological computations that underlie the control of movements. Our ultimate goal is to use the language of mathematics to describe how the various parts of the brain contribute to control of movement in humans.
To build a theory of biological motor control, we do the following kinds of experiments: 1) behavioral experiments where eye and arm movements of people are measured as they learn to control robots, 2) brain imaging experiments where metabolic activity in the brain is measured during motor control, and 3) human neurophysiology experiments where single neuron activity is measured in the brain during neurosurgery as the patient makes goal-directed movements.