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2008 Advances in Computational Motor Control 

Symposium at the Society for Neuroscience Meeting

 Friday, November 14, 2008, 1:00 PM - 9:30 PM

Room 145AB, Convention Center, Washington DC

Computational theories have had a growing impact on the field of motor control. The goal of this annual symposium is to highlight advances in experimental and computational approaches to the study of motor control. The idea is to not only present interesting empirical observations, but also ask what these observations might imply in terms of how the brain controls our actions.  A second goal is to provide an annual forum to hear some of the best and most interesting new experimental results on motor control, presented by people most directly responsible for it. 

This year we had 44 extended abstracts.  Each was ranked by 3 reviewers.  The top 10 were picked for oral presentation, and 12 were picked for poster presentations.

1:00-1:05       Opening Remarks

1:05-2:35       Session 1: Platform presentations

• Invited talk: Philip Sabes (University of California San Francisco)

  • Normative models and networks: sensorimotor learning from two perspectives.

• Byron Yu, John Cunningham, Mark Churchland, Gopal Santhanam, Stephen Ryu, Maneesh Sahani, and Krishna Shenoy (Stanford University, and Univ. College London)

• Single-trial analysis of neural population activity during motor preparation.

• Timothy Lillicrap and Stephen Scott (Queen's University)

  • The activity of primary motor cortex is shaped by the properties of the musculoskeletal system.

• Emo Todorov (University of California San Diego)

• Parallels between sensory and motor information processing.

2:45-4:10       Session 2: Platform presentations

• Alfred Schouten, Winfred Mugge, Erwin de Vlugt, Frans van der Helm (Delft University Netherlands)

• Humans optimally adapt afferent feedback to stabilize unstable loads.

• Adrian Haith, Carl Jackson, Chris Miall, and Sethu Vijayakumar (University of Edinburgh, and University of Birmingham)

• Interactions between sensory and motor components of adaptation predicted by a Bayesian model.

• Kunlin Wei and Konrad Kording (Northwestern University)

• Uncertainty in state estimate and feedback determines the rate of motor adaptation.

• Minnan Xu, Haiyin Chen-Harris, David Zee, and Reza Shadmehr (Johns Hopkins)

  • The cerebellum and the adaptive control of saccades via internal feedback.

4:15-5:45       Session 3: Poster presentations

• Terry Sanger (Stanford University)

  • Likelihood calculus: A new mathematical approach to understanding the dynamics of Bayesian controllers with quantized internal representations.

• Daniel Guitton and H Galiana (Montreal Neurological Institute and McGill University, Canada)

  • On the feedback control of coordinated eye-head gaze shifts.

• Nicolas Gonzalez Castro, Matthew Hemphill, and Maurice Smith (Harvard University)

  • Learning to learn: Environmental consistency modulates motor adaptation rates.

• Heiko Hoffmann, Evangelos Theodorou, and Stefan Schaal (University of Southern California)

  • Optimization strategies in human reinforcement learning.

• Jun Izawa and Reza Shadmehr (Johns Hopkins University)

  • Exploration and exploitation in reward based visuomotor learning.

• Greg Stephens and William Bialek (Princeton University)

  • More bits for behavior: From the movement of C. elegans towards the principles of animal action.

• Michael Mistry, Evangelos Theodorou, Gary Liaw, Toshinori Yoshioka, Stefan Schaal, and Mitsuo Kawato (ATR CNS, Univ. Southern California, NiCT, and JST ICORP)

  • Adaptation to a sub-optimal desired trajectory.

• Herman Van der Kooij, and Robert Peterka (University of Twente, and Oregan Health & Science University)

  • Optimization analysis of human stance control predicts the observed non-linear stimulus-response behavior of a system dominated by sensory noise.

• Giby Rphael and Gerald Loeb (University of Southern California)

  • Understanding the role of the spinal cord in voluntary movement by discrete circuit modeling: bottom-up strategy.

• Jeroen Smeets, H.P. Slijper, J.M. Richter, E.A.B. Over, and Marten Frens (VU University Amsterdam, and Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands)

  • A Bayesian explanation for curved movement paths.

• Renaud Ronsse, Kunlin Wei, and Dagmar Sternad (Katholieke University Belgium, Northwestern University, and Northeastern University)

  • Optimal feedback control of Rhythmic movements: the bouncing ball revisited.

• Bernard Mettler and Zhaodan Kong (University of Minnesota)

• A control-theoretic investigation of dynamic spatial behavior.

6:00-7:30       Dinner (on your own)

7:30-9:15       Session 4: Platform presentations

• Invited talk: Hagai Bergman (Hebrew University)

  • Physiological studies of the functional architecture of the basal ganglia reinforcement learning networks.

• Steve Chang and Larry Snyder (Washington University)

  • Gain fields for the distance between the ocular fixation point and the arm.

  • Ziad Hafed and Rich Krauzlis (Salk Institute)

  • A new view of how the superior colliculus supports gaze stability.

  • Matthew Phillips and Mickey Goldberg (Columbia University)

  • The primate oculomotor system plans saccades to objects not points.

Registration: There is no registration or fees for this symposium.  Simply come and enjoy the science.

Abstracts and programs from previous symposiums:

2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002

Symposium Organizers:  

Emo Todorov, University of California, San Diego

Reza Shadmehr, Johns Hopkins University