Research Project B02

B02-1 Modeling of motor control that alters body representations in brain

Research Outline

Body representation in brain plays an important role for the generation of adaptive motor functions (fast dynamics), while it gradually alters to adapt to the changes of several conditions by brain plasticity (slow dynamics). Meanwhile, muscle activities are represented by low dimensional structure composed of characteristic spatiotemporal patterns depending on tasks. This structure is well-known as muscle synergy and viewed as a neural strategy for simplifying the control of multiple degrees of freedom in biological systems. In this project, to elucidate mechanisms of the body representation in brain for adaptive motor control, we aim to construct fast and slow dynamics models by focusing on muscle synergy. We assume that the alteration of muscle synergy structure reflects the alteration of the body representation in brain, and we clarify the contribution of the body representation in brain through modeling the fast and slow dynamics of the synergy structure.

Members

ota

Jun OTA

Principal Investigator Jun Ota (Professor, The University of Tokyo)
Co-Investigator* Shinya Aoi (Lecturer, Kyoto University) Collaborate with B03-1
Co-Investigator* Ryosuke Chiba (Associate Professor, Asahikawa Medical University)
Co-Investigator Taiki Ogata (Assistant Professor, The University of Tokyo)
Co-Investigator Dai Yanagihara (Associate Professor, The University of Tokyo) Collaborate with B03-1
Co-Investigator Kazuo Tsuchiya (Emeritus Professor, Kyoto University)
Co-Investigator Toshio Aoyagi (Professor, Kyoto University)
Co-Investigator Soichiro Fujiki (Assistant Professor, The University of Tokyo)
Co-Investigator Shohei Shirafuji (Researcher, The University of Tokyo)
Co-Investigator Yu Yong (Professor, Kagoshima University)

* funded co-investigator