Motor Control & Munchies (MC&M)

This seminar series began September 30, 2009. The idea is to provide a forum for scientific interaction and learning with relatively broad subject matter that could be of interest to a variety of individuals who are working in the fields of neuroscience, robotics, and motor control, learning and recovery. We want to place special emphasis on areas where these fields intersect and on their possible relevance to clinical rehabilitation.

The seminar is meant to provide an opportunity for graduate students, fellows, as well as early career and established scientists to learn from each other, guest speakers and recent findings reported in the literature. This seminar is also an important tool for building multi-disciplinary collaborations between scientists working at various institutions in the Washington DC metro area. MC&M gatherings are held monthly on the 2nd Wednesday of the month, in our teleconference room.

Seminar Schedule

Date		Speaker		Topic
5/11/11		Sandy McCombe Waller, PT PhD NCS		Combined Training Approaches to Improve Arm Function and Balance in Patients with Chronic Stroke
4/13/11		James Howard, MD		Age-Related Striatal Dysfunction in Implicit Learning
3/9/11		Dr. Gelsy Torres-Oviedo, PhD		Understanding motor adaptation for the rehabilitation of gait and balance
2/3/11		Dr. Maureen Whitford PT, PhD		Task-Related Variations in the Surface EMG of Human First Dorsal Interosseus Muscle
12/8/10		Dr. Mark P. Burns, PhD		Linkages Between TBI and Alzheimer's disease
11/10/10		Washington Hospital Center, Grand Rounds: Dr. Sandra Black, Brill Chair Neurology, University of Toronto, Brain Sciences Research Program Director, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center		The Challenge of Co-Morbid Brain Disease for Stroke Rehabilitation
10/13/10		Dr. Julie Chapman, Washington DC VA Medical Center's War Related Illness and Injury Study Center (WRIISC) and Principal Investigator of the Markers for the Identification, Norming, and Differentiation of TBI and PTSD (MIND) study		Measurement of Combat-related TBI and PTSD: An Integrative Diagnostics Approach
9/8/10		Dr. George Wittenberg, Associate Professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Department of Neurology and Deputy Director of the VA Maryland Exercise and Robotics Center of Excellence		Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation of Arm Motor Cortex in a Robotic Training Environment
6/9/10		Dr. Sarah Shomstein, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, George Washington University		Perceptual processing in patients with visuo-spatial neglect
5/12/10		Dr. Anindo Roy, Assistant Professor, Department of Neurology, University of Maryland, Baltimore		Lower Extremity Robotics in Stroke Rehabilitation: Intervention Development and Research Directions
4/14/10		Dr. Jill Whitall, Professor, Department of Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation Science, University of Maryland, Baltimore		Update on possible role of bilateral (vs. unilateral) arm training in stroke rehabilitation*
3/10/10		Rochelle Tractenberg PhD		Motor control tasks as “outcomes”
2/24/10		Alexander Libin PhD		Computerized assessment of executive dysfunction through motor performance(COMPASSED) in neurologically impaired populations
1/13/10 (postponed)		Peter Lum PhD		Use of principle component analysis to analyze kinematic data*
12/9/09		Sasha Blue Godfrey, PhD Candidate		Cortical excitability changes after repetitive self-regulated vs. tracking movements of the hand
11/11/09		Chris Schabowsky, PhD Candidate		Robot assisted hand movement after stroke: A pilot study
10/14/09		Pepe Contreras-Vidal PhD		Breaking the neural code: Non-invasive decoding of hand movement with applications to BCI/BMI research
9/30/09		Michelle Harris-Love PT, PhD		Welcome & Introduction

* Exact title not yet confirmed