Chair of Human Movement Science

On July 24th, 2017 Prof. Jürgen Konczak from the University of Minnesota, who is currently staying at TUM as part of the August-Wilhem Scheer Visiting Professorship, will give a workshop "Biomechanical, electrophysiological and neuronal measures of sensorimotor performance and motor learning in atypical populations". The workshop is for students of the FGZ as well as Post-docs.

Salazar-Lopez, E., Schwaiger, B., & Hermsdörfer, J. (2016). Lesion correlates of impairments in actual tool use following unilateral brain damage.

Research has often demonstrated that a regular beat in music makes it easier for us to perceive and synchronize with musical rhythms. Here we show that a similar process is taking place when we observe dance movements: We use the regular pattern in the trajectory as a visual beat, which assists us in timing the movement sequence perceptually. These results not only reveal parallel perceptual mechanisms for music and dance rhythms, but also yield implications in how we can acquire movement skills by perceptual learning.

Yi-Huang Su & Elvira Salazar-López (2016). Visual Timing of Structured Dance Movements Resembles Auditory Rhythm Perception. Neural Plasticity, vol. 2016, Article ID 1678390. doi:10.1155/2016/1678390

Ever feel this urge to tap your foot along when you hear groovy music? This is a typical example of “sensorimotor synchronization”, where we synchronize a regular pattern of movement (e.g., foot tapping, head nodding) to rhythmic sensory information such as music. This study shows that similar mechanisms exist when we observe rhythmic dance movements: We can pick up a regular beat in the movement and tap along with it. As with music, tapping to dance stimuli is also influenced by intricate rhythm information in the entire movement.

Su, Y-H (2016) Sensorimotor Synchronization with Different Metrical Levels of Point-Light Dance Movements. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 10:186. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00186

We all listen to music and get the rhythm easily: for example, we move naturally to the beat. But could we also “see” the rhythm of dance movements in a similar manner? This study is part of the ongoing project that investigates how humans visually perceive and synchronize to the rhythm of dance movements, and how this process compares to that in hearing musical rhythms. The first results suggest that rhythm perception in dance may engage similar principles to rhythm perception in music. Su, Y.-H., (2016).

Visual tuning and metrical perception of realistic point-light dance movements. Scientific Reports, 6:22774. doi: 10.1038/srep22774.

The Chair of Human Movement Science successfully applied for a new project in the EIT Health program. With this initiative the „European Institute for Innovation & Technology (EIT)“ supports innovations for healthy living and active aging. The project “Active Hands” will provide methods to prevent or reduce the consequence of deficits in performing complex activities of daily living - such as during food preparation or daily hygiene – that arise in old age and due to central nervous system diseases. “Active Hands” will thus promote independent and autonomous living.  The project is coordinated by the Chair of Human Movement Science and has four other partners from Spain and France. The planned duration is three years and the funding of the first project year amounts at 450.000 € for the whole group.

In clinical settings, caregivers provide manual support during locomotion to patients with impaired body balance. Thus, interpersonal manual support represents an ecologically valid and effective strategy for controlling a patients' fall risk in dynamic postural activities. From a therapeutic point of view, however, restricting patient's movement degrees of freedom by grasping his body to support his weight has to be considered inadequate for the purpose of practicing own control of body balance. A more promising strategy is balance support provided in a 'light touch' fashion, for example by lightly resting a hand on the back or shoulder of a patient without taking patient's weight. We like to ask which are the qualities that make an expert healthcare provider so efficient in the provision of adaptive manual balance support? We believe the answer is associated with the ability to anticipate a patient's dynamics. The scientific aim of the research project is, therefore to improve the understanding of interpersonal dynamics of light touch in general and the caregiver-patient interaction during light interpersonal touch stabilisation in particular. Our engineering aim is the translation of the principles of human-to-human interpersonal coordination for light tactile balance support into a robotic solution. Major outcomes will be measures of the contact receiver's postural stability and interpersonal coordination with the provider but also autonomic measures of the receiver's state anxiety of falling. The later will express human acceptance of the robotic balance support.

On Tuesday, 22nd July the working group visited the Centre for Virtual Reality und Visualization (V2C) at the Leibniz Rechenzentrum. The centre provides a high resolution projection screen for visualization purposes and a “VR cave” with a 5-sided projection-installation for creating virtual reality scenarios. This installation makes it possible to create a realistic manipulable 3D world in which a subject can act. The cave therefore offers exciting possibilities for research in human movement science. We thank the V2C for the presentation of their installations and hope for further cooperations.

M.M.N. Bieńkiewicz, W.R. Young, C.M. Craig (2014) Balls to the wall: How acoustic information from a ball in motion guides interceptive movement in people with Parkinson’s disease

Link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306452214005351

Su, Y.-H. (2014). Audiovisual beat induction in complex auditory rhythms: Point-light figure movement as an effective visual beat. Acta Psychologica, 151, 40–50. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2014.05.016

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24932996

Su, Y.-H. (2014) Visual enhancement of auditory beat perception across auditory interference levels. Brain and Cognition, 90, 19-31.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278262614000864