Exploring the frontiers of neuroscience

How are the muscles in the lower leg activated by the nervous system in order for you to walk? Can we use the same strategy to direct the movement of an active prosthesis? In my talk, I will introduce how we can reduce the complexity of human movement using mathematical models and use them to control lower limb prostheses.

Systems neuroscience aims to understand the neural underpinnings of behaviors. While existing setups allow us to record the brain activity of behaving monkeys, the behaviors, which can be studied, remain restrictive. From field studies on the other hand we know that monkeys like to engage in a variety of full-body behaviors but their neural correlates remain unknown. In my talk I will present you (amongst others) videos of our fantastic monkeys interacting in the Exploration Room, which is our novel setup for systems neuroscience studies attempting to narrow the gap.