Category: Media

Amanda Edwards’s presentation at the OSU MBI Workshop: CONTROL AND MODULATION OF NEURONAL AND MOTOR SYSTEMS, September 12, 2017:

https://mbi.osu.edu/video/player/?id=4343

Abstract: People with damage to their cerebellum often exhibit “reaching ataxia”, or misdirected, poorly scaled movement patterns which are reminiscent of a poorly tuned control system. Ataxia affects most all activities of daily living (e.g. eating, cooking, bathing, dressing, working). It is believed that these patients have a static, miscalibrated internal model of their body dynamics; however, it is unknown whether their feedback control is intact. We challenged these participants with visuomotor system identification tasks in order to model their feedback control architecture. Our results suggest that cerebellar patients have intact feedback control, but are forced to rely on time-delayed visual feedback. The key difference is that healthy subjects seem to be able to compensate for their visuomotor delay suggesting that the cerebellum may be serving the role of a Smith predictor for this task. Finally, we were able to leverage the cerebellar patients intact visuomotor feedback control system to improve the scaling of these movements by altering their visual feedback based on their real-time movement in a virtual reality environment.

News articles

• Science Daily

Related articles

S. Sefati, I. D. Neveln, E. Roth, T. R. T. Mitchell, J. B. Snyder, M. A. MacIver, E. S. Fortune and N. J. Cowan. “Mutually opposing forces during locomotion can eliminate the tradeoff between maneuverability and stability”. PNAS, 110(47):18798-18803, 2013. [pdf] [Supp. pdf]

M. S. Madhav, S. A. Stamper, E. S. Fortune, and N. J. Cowan. “Closed-loop stabilization of the jamming avoidance response reveals its locally unstable and globally nonlinear dynamics”. J Exp Biol, 216:4272-4284, 2013. [pdf]

S. A. Stamper*, M. S. Madhav*, N. J. Cowan, and E. S. Fortune. “Beyond the Jamming Avoidance Response: Weakly electric fish respond to the envelope of social electrosensory signals”. J Exp Biol, 215:4196-4207, 2012 . [pdf] *Contributed equally. Ranked as one of the top 3 publications in 2012 in J Exp Biol. Highlighted in Inside JEB: “Gregarious Electric Fish Adjust to Maintain Social Envelope”

S. A. Stamper*, M. S. Madhav*, N. J. Cowan, and E. S. Fortune. “Beyond the Jamming Avoidance Response: Weakly electric fish respond to the envelope of social electrosensory signals”. J Exp Biol, 215:4196-4207, 2012 . [pdf] *Contributed equally. Ranked as one of the top 3 publications in 2012 in J Exp Biol. Highlighted in Inside JEB: “Gregarious Electric Fish Adjust to Maintain Social Envelope”

E. Roth, K. Zhuang, S. A. Stamper, E. S. Fortune, and N. J. Cowan. “Stimulus predictability mediates a switch in locomotor smooth pursuit performance for Eigenmannia virescens.” Journal of Experimental Biology. 214:1170-1180, 2011. [pdf] [Download cover illustration]

N. J. Cowan and E. S. Fortune. “The critical role of locomotion mechanics in decoding sensory systems.” Journal of Neuroscience, 27(5):1123-1128, 2007. [pdf]

Short presentation at IROS 2014 by Alican Demir

Relevant papers:

• J. Mongeau, A. Demir, C. Dallmann, K. Jayaram, N. J. Cowan, and R. J. Full, “Mechanical processing via passive dynamic properties of the cockroach antenna can facilitate control during rapid running,” J Exp Biol, vol. 217, iss. 18, p. 3333–3345, 2014.
  [Bibtex]

  @article{mongeaumechanical2014,
  title = {Mechanical processing via passive dynamic properties
  of the cockroach antenna can facilitate control
  during rapid running},
  journal = {J Exp Biol},
  author = {Jean-Michel Mongeau and Alican Demir and Chris
  J. Dallmann and Kaushik Jayaram and Noah J. Cowan
  and Robert J. Full},
  year = 2014,
  volume = 217,
  number = 18,
  pages = {3333--3345},
  doi = {10.1242/jeb.101501},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.101501},
  }

• J. Mongeau, A. Demir, J. Lee, N. J. Cowan, and R. J. Full, “Locomotion- and mechanics-mediated tactile sensing: antenna reconfiguration simplifies control during high-speed navigation in cockroaches,” J Exp Biol, vol. 216, iss. 24, p. 4530–4541, 2013.
  [Bibtex]

  @article{mongeaulocomotion2013,
  author = {Jean-Michel Mongeau and Alican Demir and Jusuk Lee
  and Noah J. Cowan and Robert J. Full},
  title = {Locomotion- and mechanics-mediated tactile sensing:
  antenna reconfiguration simplifies control during
  high-speed navigation in cockroaches},
  journal = {J Exp Biol},
  volume = 216,
  number = 24,
  pages = {4530--4541},
  year = 2013,
  doi = {10.1242/jeb.083477},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.083477}
  }

• N. J. Cowan, J. Lee, and R. J. Full, “Task-level control of rapid wall following in the American cockroach,” J Exp Biol, vol. 209, iss. 9, p. 1617–1629, 2006.
  [Bibtex]

  @ARTICLE{cowantask-level2006,
  author = {Noah J. Cowan and Jusuk Lee and Robert J. Full},
  title = {Task-level control of rapid wall following in the
  {A}merican cockroach},
  journal = {J Exp Biol},
  year = 2006,
  volume = 209,
  pages = {1617--1629},
  number = 9,
  doi = {10.1242/jeb.02166},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.02166}
  }

• A. Demir, E. W. Samson, and N. J. Cowan, “A tunable physical model of arthropod antennae,” in Proc IEEE Int Conf Robot Autom, Anchorage, AK, USA, 2010, pp. 3793-3798.
  [Bibtex]

  @inproceedings{demirtunable2010,
  author = {Alican Demir and Edward W. Samson and Noah J. Cowan},
  title = {A tunable physical model of arthropod antennae},
  booktitle = {Proc IEEE Int Conf Robot Autom},
  year = 2010,
  pages = {3793-3798},
  address = {Anchorage, AK, USA},
  month = may,
  doi = {10.1109/ROBOT.2010.5509323},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/ROBOT.2010.5509323}
  }

• A. Demir, “A Modular, Tunable Tactile Antenna for Exploring the Mechanics of Sensing,” Master Thesis, 2009.
  [Bibtex]

  @MASTERSTHESIS{demirmodular2009,
  author = {Alican Demir},
  title = {A Modular, Tunable Tactile Antenna for Exploring the Mechanics of Sensing},
  school = {Johns Hopkins University},
  year = 2009,
  url = {https://catalyst.library.jhu.edu/catalog/bib_3985789}
  }

News articles:

Baltimore Sun

Johns Hopkins Engineering Magazine

Relevant Articles

M. M. Ankarali, H. Tutkun Şen, A. De, A. M. Okamura, and N. J. Cowan. “Haptic feedback enhances rhythmic motor control by reducing variability, not improving convergence rate”. J Neurophysiol, 111(6):1286-1299, 2014. [pdf]  [Download cover illustration]

M. M. Ankarali, S. Sefati, M. S. Madhav, A. Long, A. J. Bastian, and N. J. Cowan. “Walking dynamics are symmetric (enough)”. J. R. Soc. Interface, 12: 20150209, 2015. [pdf] [Data and Source Code]