Author: Julie Pryor

Photos: Justin Knight and Doreen Reuchsel

The annual McGovern Institute symposium took place on May 8, 2013 and featured nine talks on the subject of motor control and the motor cortex. In this video, Moshe Abeles of Bar-Ilan University presents his talk, entitled “Detecting the dynamics of binding amongst cortical areas: a MEG study.”

The annual McGovern Institute symposium took place on May 8, 2013 and featured nine talks on the subject of motor control and the motor cortex. In this video, Sandro Mussa-Ivaldi of Northwestern University presents his talk, entitled “Geometrical aspects of modularity in motor control, learning and brain-machine interfaces.”

The annual McGovern Institute symposium took place on May 8, 2013 and featured nine talks on the subject of motor control and the motor cortex. In this video, Krishna Shenoy of Stanford University presents his talk, entitled “Motor cortical control and prostheses: a dynamical systems perspective.”

The annual McGovern Institute symposium took place on May 8, 2013 and featured nine talks on the subject of motor control and the motor cortex. In this video, Bob Wurtz of the NIH presents his talk, entitled “Adding corollary discharge to motor computations for action and perception.”

The annual McGovern Institute symposium took place on May 8, 2013 and featured nine talks on the subject of motor control and the motor cortex. In this video, Tamar Flash of the Weizmann Institute presents her talk, entitled “Geometry, time and compositionality in movement representations.”

The annual McGovern Institute symposium took place on May 8, 2013 and featured nine talks on the subject of motor control and the motor cortex. In this video, Larry Abbott of Columbia University presents his talk, entitled “Network Models of Motor Cortex.”

The annual McGovern Institute symposium, which took place on May 8, 2013, featured nine talks on the subject of motor control and the motor cortex. Motor commands represent the output of the brain and its evolutionary raison d’être. To produce useful movements the brain must select appropriate combinations of muscles from a vast range of possibilities, and must activate them with precise control of force and timing.

This symposium explored how the brain accomplishes this task: what computations does it perform to control movement, how and where in the brain does this happen, and how can this knowledge be exploited for rehabilitation and for the development of neural prosthetics.