Announcement: Visit of Prof. Koji Ito on Sept. 22, 2009

On Tuesday, September 22. 2009, Prof. Koji Ito will visit our Institute and discuss common topics of interest, mainly in the area of analysis and modeling of human posture and movements. He has been the chair of IMEKO TC-18 (Technical Committee on Measurement of Human Functions) for quite a long time. For more details about his specialization, please visit http://www.ito.dis.titech.ac.jp/

Prof. Koji will give a talk about his topics of research and experience on September 22, at 9 am (room HS K2 in Kronesgasse 5). Please consider attending the presentation and to have a discussion with Prof. Koji ITO during his visit.

Title: Adaptive Motor Behaviors through Dynamic Interactions among the Body, Brain and Environment

Abstract
In daily life, humans must compensate for the resultant force arising from interaction with the physical environment. It has been shown that humans can acquire a neural representation of the relation between motor command and movement, i.e. learn an internal model of the environment dynamics. For example, Shadmehr et al have analyzed various reaching movements under velocity-dependent force field (VF) where the hand receives the external load in proportion to the hand velocity. It is then shown that human compensates for the external load by the feedforward control based on the internal model. It is here called <internal model control>. On the other hand, in manipulation tasks, such as opening a door, grasping a cup etc., the dynamic interaction between the human arm and external environment determines the stability of motion. Therefore, it has much important to adjust the arm impedance corresponding to the environment dynamics, which is called <impedance control>.
The talk will discuss adaptive motor behaviors to dynamic environments in human voluntary movements. The experimental results demonstrate that human adaptation to a varying dynamic environment during reaching movements is achieved by programming the internal model control and impedance control in a feedforward manner. In addition, the talk will refer to application of motor learning to human motor rehabilitation.