Seminar: A mechanistic opinion about movement in mammals, Dr Samit Chakrabarty, University of Leeds

Abstract: In my group, we have been exploring the rules of plasticity that govern motor activity via the spinal circuits related to the hands and legs. Our focus is on the modulation of these spinal circuits during the task in normal and in disease or dysfunctional states like spinal cord injury, cerebral palsy or strokes. We take a neuromechanical view of the nervous system, exploring the interaction between muscles, neuronal pathways and the environment in both animals and humans, examined by studying the functional outputs while recording from the associated sites. We have established the role of co-operation and competition between pathways in short and long temporal scales for effective recovery from injuries influencing motor output, especially in cerebral palsy.

In this talk, I will provide evidence for the ideas above and how we are currently developing tools to identify the pathways active in people during specific tasks – synergies, but observing changes that occur within a period enough for a single synaptic event to influence the output without the involvement of the brain. The wishful thinking here, and in development of closed loop recording – stimulation algorithms, is that it is likely to aid in defining tools that are more effective in carrying out faster recovery from perturbation or adjusting to the demand.