Abstract:

The notions of motor skill and motor planning will be discussed in the light of results in healthy subjects and patients with apraxia. I will also discuss situations when learning systems compete and will try and rethink the famous case of HM. 
 

Dr John Krakauer with a dolphin behind him

Biography:

Dr Krakauer is currently John C. Malone Professor, Professor of Neurology, Neuroscience, and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and Director of the Brain, Learning, Animation, and Movement Lab (www.BLAM-lab.org).

His areas of research interest are: (1) Experimental and computational studies of motor control and motor learning in humans (2) Tracking long-term motor skill learning and its relation to higher cognitive processes such as decision-making. (3) Prediction of motor recovery after stroke (4) Mechanisms of motor recovery after stroke in mouse and non-human primate models, as well as in humans (5) New technology-based neuro-restorative behavioural training for neurological conditions and aging.

Dr Krakauer is also co-founder of the company MSquare Health and of the creative engineering Hopkins-based project named KATA. KATA and MSquare are both predicated on the idea that animal movement based on real physics is highly pleasurable and that this pleasure is hugely heightened when the animal movement is under the control of our own movements. A simulated dolphin and other cetaceans developed by KATA has led to a therapeutic game that has been interfaced with an exoskeletal robot in a multi-site rehabilitation trial for early stroke recovery, and with motion tracking for cognitive therapy in the normal aged.  Dr Krakauer’s book, “Broken Movement: The Neurobiology of Motor Recovery after Stroke” was published by the MIT Press in November 2017.
 

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