Low dimensional motor neural structure of freely moving ambulation and reaching

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract
Motor systems neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field that studies how the brain controls voluntary movement. Mechanistic and correlational understandings gained from decades of animal studies have been translated into brain machine interfaces, devices that can potentially help individuals with motor injury. However, most of these studies have been done in classically constrained settings. There is growing theoretical evidence, but limited experimental proof, that suggests that these models of neural control may not generalize to naturalistic settings. Thus, there is a knowledge gap in both mechanistic understanding and clinically translatable findings of how the brain controls unconstrained behavior. My PhD work focuses on bridging this knowledge gap by exploring the neural control of free locomotion and unconstrained reaching, broken up into 3 main projects: 1. Building a platform that collects wireless neural data and full-body markerless kinematics to study naturalistic behavior. 2. Performing computational analyses on a reach-walk task to quantify the neural differences of similar behaviors performed under different levels of cognitive difficulty. 3. Decoding locomotion to quantify the neural relationships between the gait cycle and total body position. My experimental work and computational analysis advance the field of motor systems neuroscience by representing a novel experimental platform to uncover the structure of ambulatory control. Many results from my freely moving experiments can only be captured with this platform, and show that previous constrained experiments are limited in their ability to capture the full activity of the motor cortex. My research is foundational for subsequent studies that may inform human clinical studies leveraging new insight about free movement.

Description

Type of resource text
Form electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource
Extent 1 online resource.
Place California
Place [Stanford, California]
Publisher [Stanford University]
Copyright date 2023; ©2023
Publication date 2023; 2023
Issuance monographic
Language English

Creators/Contributors

Author Ling, Alissa Sachiko
Degree supervisor Nuyujukian, Paul
Thesis advisor Nuyujukian, Paul
Thesis advisor Delp, Scott
Thesis advisor Osgood, Brad
Degree committee member Delp, Scott
Degree committee member Osgood, Brad
Associated with Stanford University, School of Engineering
Associated with Stanford University, Department of Electrical Engineering

Subjects

Genre Theses
Genre Text

Bibliographic information

Statement of responsibility Alissa Ling.
Note Submitted to the Department of Electrical Engineering.
Thesis Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2023.
Location https://purl.stanford.edu/hn362bj9550

Access conditions

Copyright
© 2023 by Alissa Sachiko Ling

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