A New Look

Brain Sciences Center launches new site 

      In 2004, we unveiled a new website designed to help raise public awareness of brain research. Today, our site has a new look! Please visit us at http://www.brain.umn.edu/

Awards

l-r: Jim Kellogg, Lloyd Schaeffer, Bill Peters, Dan Ludwig and Vasileios Christopoulos

Alonso and Christopoulos receive American Legion Family Brain Sciences Award

Brain Sciences graduate students Aurelio Alonso and Vasileios Christopoulos were awarded the 2009 American Legion Family Brain Sciences Award on Wednesday, September 11th during the 15th Annual American Legion and University of Minnesota Lecture in Brain Sciences. The lecture, "Circuits & circuit disorders of the basal ganglia: surgical repair", was was given by Mahlon DeLong, M.D., W.P. Timmie Professor of Neurology at Emory University School of Medicine. The awards were presented by Jim Kellogg, president of the Brain Science Foundation; Lloyd Schaeffer and Bill Peters, Sons of the American Legion; and Dan Ludwig, past-National Commander, American Legion.

Aurelio Alonso's PhD thesis project involves brain imaging and temporo-mandibular disorder. He uses magnetoencephalography (MEG) to measure the brain activity level during non-painful tactile stimuli that are applied to the faces of normal and arthomayalgic subjects. Aurelio's future goal is to pursue an academic career and to study the differents types of orofacial pain conditions.

Vasileios Christopoulos' PhD thesis topic is "Characteristics information required for human motor control". He is interested in using MEG to study the way the brain represents information and uncertainty in motor control tasks. After graduation, Vasileios plans to continue his research and looks forward to teaching sudents about the 'secrets of brain science'.

 Publications

 

On October 1st, the Journal of Mathematics and Music accepted a paper by Roger Dumas and Apostolos Georgopoulos entitled "What Prewhitened Music Can Tell Us About Multi-Instrument Compositions".
Summary:
     We have discovered remarkable temporal associations between instruments in multi-instrument musical pieces after elimination of melody. Although it is commonly assumed that associations between instruments stem from the fact that these instruments play similar melodic parts, here we show that strong temporal associations do not depend on melody but exist in its absence. This indicates the presence of a compositional ‘structural’ framework among instruments based on dynamic, temporal interactions. We hypothesize that such a framework is at the heart of the process of musical composition. Since similar melodies can be arranged in different ways, resulting in unique compositions, the instrument framework above may be a fundamental aspect of the musical arrangement in the composer’s palette.

On September 3rd, PLOS Computational Biology accepted a paper by Vasileios Christopoulos and Paul Schrater (Psychology & Computer Science) entitled, "Grasping objects with environmentally induced position uncertainty".

Summary:
     Optimal sensorimotor control models actions as decisions that maximize the desirableness of outcomes, where the desirableness is captured by an expected cost or utility to each action sequence. These models provide explanations for many aspects of our ability to compensate for uncertainty, but they have not been applied to understanding purposive movements – movements involving the application of forces to change the relative position of objects and the actor in the environment. Using time efficiency as a natural cost function, we present a statistical optimal control analysis of uncertainty compensation strategies in a purposive movement task, grasping an object with directional position uncertainty. In accord with the predictions of the analysis, the experimental results showed that people compensate for uncertainty by adopting grasp strategies that increase the chance to produce a stable grasp at first contact. Our findings suggest that visuomotor system plans for uncertainty even in complex purposive movements.

© 2004 by the Brain Sciences Center. All Rights Reserved.

The University of Minnesota is an equal opportunity educator and employer. | Privacy Statement