Position:	Visiting Scientist -- ended Jan 2012
Email:
Work phone:	+41 44 635 3019
Home page:	http://www.ini.uzh.ch/~hjs

The use of the human hand plays a central role in human motor behavior. While many brain areas are involved in the generation of hand movements, several specialized areas in the premotor and parietal cortex play a dominant role for the high-level preparation of hand movements. Generally, the generation of hand motor plans involves the transformation of visual information and volitional signals into motor plans can be readily executed. The capacity to plan hand movements is preserved, even if the neural pathway to execute these motor signals is disrupted, like in patients with spinal cord injury or stroke. In these patients, neural commands can no longer reach the hand, but it may be possible to read out and interpret these signals and deliver them to either the natural or a prosthetic hand.
In order to learn the decoding of these planning signals, we investigate how hand movement planning signals are generated and how these movement plans can be decoded to control a robotic hand.