Overview
Movement is the only way we have of interacting with the world, whether foraging for food or attracting a waiter's attention. Therefore, the purpose of the human brain is to use sensory signals to determine future actions.
Motor planning
Despite the infinite number of possible movements that could be used to achieve a task, humans and other animals show highly stereotypical trajectories.
Sensorimotor learning
Humans exhibit an enormous repertoire of motor behavior that enables us to interact with many different objects in a variety of different environments.
Probabilistic and predictive models
Our work on internal predictive models—neural systems that simulate the behavior of a natural process—has shown that they are a vital theoretical component used to solve fundamental problems in sensorimotor control.
Sensorimotor decision-making
Both decision making and motor control require acting on streams of noisy evidence. Thus both rely on inference, termination rules, time constraints, and value/effort costs.
Robotic interface development
We develop robotic interfaces critical for studying the control of movement.