VISION

To understand the basic cognitive and brain mechanisms underlying skill acquisition is the basis for our ability to learn new movements, actions, and skills. This will have tremendous impact in Neurosciences, Psychology and in Engineering. It will enable to devise new therapies for teaching both those who are impaired in some basic motor skills (as in stroke patients), as well as for those who must learn new skills (as in sport).

SCIENTIFIC TOPICS

This project will start by observing how normal adults perceive the motion of others and acquire new skills by imitation. We will then conduct behavioural studies in adults suffering from deficits in perception (akinetopsia, body schema disturbances) and imitation (apraxia, echopraxia) due to focal brain damage. This will enable us to draw neural models of the brain mechanisms underlying human perception of movement and human ability for imitation. Finally and most importantly, we will use the knowledge acquired in these studies to design rehabilitation scenarios to drive acquisition of generic motor skills for neurological patients and to develop therapeutic robotic platforms to help autistic children acquire coordination skills.

APPLICATIONS

This project will work towards the development of computer-based and robotic-based tools for therapy and rehabilitation of people suffering from deficits in both perception and production of movement.

RESULTS

Progresses were made along the following lines;

a) Development of a neurocomputational model of imitation learning that accounts for the scores reported in clinical examination of imitation deficit following callosal lesions.

b) Kinematic studies of imitation deficit according to the test as conducted in the clinical examination driving the computational model.

MAIN PUBLICATIONS

Petreska, B., Adriani, M., Blanke, O. and Billard, A. (2007) Apraxia. A Review. In C. von Hofsten (Ed.). From Action to Cognition. Progress in Brain Research. Elsevier. Amsterdam . To appear.

Brooks A, Van der Zwan R, Billard A, Petraska B, Clarke S, Blanke O (2007) Auditory motion influences biological motion perception. Neuropsychologia 45: 523-530.