Learning From Broken Brains:
Robotic Stroke Therapy and Human Movement Control
Neville Hogan
Department of
Mechanical Engineering
Department of
Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Massachusetts
Institute of Technology
Neurologic injury is a major and growing source of health-care cost in the US and worldwide, affording a new opportunity for robotics: improved treatment and reduced cost may be achieved using appropriately human-compatible robots. Results to date are promising: robotic treatment of stroke has a lasting benefit and yields twice the impairment reduction of human-administered therapy.
Using robots to enhance the performance of brain-injured humans affords a unique opportunity to study how human brains learn and control movement. This presentation will review striking evidence that although neural computation is massively parallel and continuous, human movement control is fundamentally serial and intermittent. Furthermore, despite their grace and coordination, movement speed is surprisingly difficult for humans to control. Some implications for brain-machine interfaces and human
3:30 - 5:00 p.m.
1500 EECS