Sensorimotor pathways underlying the control of balance and movement

Join us for a talk by Robyn Mildren, a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University and prospective faculty candidate in the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering.

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Abstract: Integrated feedback from sensory systems that provide real-time information about our position and movement in the world is essential for the control of balance and movement. This talk will focus on the contributions of two sensory systems – somatosensory and vestibular – to balance control, as well as the interplay between multiple streams of sensory input at spinal and cerebellar levels in human and non-human primates. Using a combination of human neurophysiology and biomechanics, we demonstrate how somatosensory information from cutaneous afferents and muscle spindles in the lower limb provide crucial feedback eliciting reflex ive balance corrections. Furthermore, assessing impairments to these sensory pathways during standing has direct implications for understanding balance deficits associated with aging and neurological injuries. The cerebellum performs computations that are essential for postural stability during everyday life. In addition to combining multisensory input, the cerebellum is known f or its ability to generate internal model-based predictions of the sensory consequences of our movements. These predictions allow our body to selectively respond to feedback resulting from unexpected perturbations with robust postural reflexes. Using high-density extracellular recordings from the cerebellum in alert rhesus monkeys, we demonstrate where and how vestibular, proprioceptive , and motor inputs are (and are not) integrated to compute head and body motion in space. We contrast the encoding of self -motion across areas of the vestibular cerebellum that are important for postural control (anterior vermis, posterior vermis, and deep cereb ellar nuclei) during passive unexpected self-motion and active voluntary movement, and when sensory prediction error is exp erimentally manipulated. We simultaneously examine the motoneuron output to neck muscles to directly determine the contributions of vestibular and cerebellar pathways to postural control. Advancing neural recording techniques in both human and animal model s – particularly the ability to concurrently record and focally stimulate individual neurons – will continue to provide valuable insight into the neural control of movement and balance, and advance approaches to identify and mitigate maladaptive effects of aging and neurological disorders.

Robyn Mildren is a postdoctoral fellow in Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. She received her BSc and MSc at the University of Guelph in Human Kinetics, and PhD at the University of British Columbia in Kinesiology. In humans, she has used neurophysiology techniques, including single sensory afferent and motor unit recordings, to investigate somatosensory contributions to balance. As a postdoc in Kathy Cullen’s lab, Robyn records high-density neural activity in the cerebellum of rhesus monkeys to understand multisensory integration and prediction in vestibular pathways. Robyn has received the Natural Sciences and Engine ering Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship Award as well as the Kavli NDI Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship Award.

Summary Sentence
Join us for a talk by Robyn Mildren, a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University and prospective faculty candidate in the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering.
Event Location
Emory University Health Sciences Research Building-II, N600
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