During the SSNR2016, students were split into groups of 3-4 to write the abstracts of the Plenary Talks. Here you can find the list of abstracts they reported:
Interfacing with the Neural System – Prof. Dominique Durand
Upper Extremity Reconstruction – Prof. Oskar C. Aszmann
An Unsupervised Decoding Framework for Prosthetics – Prof. Jose Principe
Spasticity: Mechanisms, Quantification and Treatment – Prof. Zev Rymer
Transcranial brain stimulation: potential and limitations – Prof. Walter Paulus
Modular Control of Human Locomotion – Prof. Francesco Lacquaniti
Exoskeletons on the move – Prof. Herman van der Kooij
A cell biology approach to network damage and recovery in brain lesions – Prof. Marco Molinari
Aalborg University
Prof. Sinkjær’s research interests within Motor Control include the interaction of central control with reflex circuitry of the spinal cord and the intrinsic mechanical properties of the skeletal muscle system. Within Neural Rehabilitation research, his interest is in development of methods to restore sensory-motor function through neural prostheses and methods which enhance functional neural plastic changes.
Title of the talk: Human walking – natural and artificial control through sensory feedback
University College London
Prof. Rothwell is full professor in the “Sobell Department of Motor Neuroscience and Movement Disorders” and head of the “Physiology and Pathophysiology of Human Motor Control” laboratory. The Sobell department provides a world-class base for neurophysiological research into movement control and its disorders. Rothwell’s laboratory has a leading position in the investigation of the human motor physiology. His main area of interest is transcranial magnetic stimulation and motor control and he has pioneered the use of the paired-pulse stimulation technique for interhemispheric studies. He has written over 600 papers and numerous book chapters.
Title of the talk: Non-invasive brain stimulation: prospects for rehabilitation therapy
Case Western University
Dominique M. Durand is Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Director of the Neural Engineering Center at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He received an engineering degree from France, M.Sc. degree in Biomedical Engineering from CWRU in Cleveland OH., and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto. He is an IEEE Fellow, also Fellow of the AIMBE, Institute of Physics and AAAS. He serves on several editorial boards of peer-reviewed scientific journals and he is the editor-in-chief and founding editor of the Journal of Neural Engineering. His research interests are in neural engineering, neurophysiological mechanisms of epilepsy, neuromodulation for the control of epilepsy, neural interfacing with the somatic and autonomic nervous system.
Title of the talk: Interfacing with the somatic and autonomic nervous system.
Medical University of Vienna
Prof. Aszmann joined the Division of Plastic Surgery in Vienna, Austria in 1998 where he now holds the position of Associate Professor of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Both his research and clinical focus have always been peripheral nerve reconstruction and extremity/hand rehabilitation. Since 2006 he has entered a close collaboration with the company Otto Bock to explore the possibilities and limits of bionic reconstruction which has now led to the establishment of a Center for Extremity Reconstruction and Rehabilitation. This Center has at its core interest the recovery and rehabilitation patients with impaired extremity function.
Title of the talk: Bionic Extremity Reconstruction
University of Florida
Jose C. Principe is Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida since 2002. He joined the University of Florida in 1987, after an eight year appointment as Professor at the University of Aveiro, in Portugal. Dr. Principe holds degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Porto (Bachelor), Portugal, University of Florida (Master and Ph.D.), USA and a Laurea Honoris Causa degree from the Universita Mediterranea in Reggio Calabria, Italy. Dr. Principe interests lie in nonlinear non-Gaussian optimal signal processing and modelling and in biomedical engineering. He created in 1991 the Computational NeuroEngineering Laboratory to synergistically focus the research in biological information processing models. He recently received the Gabor Award from the International Neural Network Society for his contributions.
Dr. Principe is a Fellow of the IEEE, Fellow of the AIMBE, past President of the International Neural Network Society, and Past Editor in Chief of the Transactions of Biomedical Engineering, as well as a former member of the Advisory Science Board of the FDA. He holds 5 patents and has submitted seven more. Dr. Principe was supervisory committee chair of 65 Ph.D. and 67 Master students, and he is author of more than 500 refereed publications (3 books, 4 edited books, 14 book chapters, 200 journal papers and 380 conference proceedings).
Northwestern University – Chicago
Prof. Rymer received the M.B.B.S. degree from Melbourne University, Australia, in 1962. After residency training in internal medicine and neurology, he returned to graduate training and received the Ph.D. degree in neurophysiology from Monash University, Australia. After postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health and Johns Hopkins University Medical School, Baltimore, MD, he became an Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery and Physiology at the State University of New York, Syracuse. In 1978, he became an Assistant Professor of Physiology at Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago, IL. He now holds the John G. Searle Chair in Rehabilitation Research and is Vice President for Research at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, while also holding appointments as Professor of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University and at Hines VA, Hines, IL. He is also Director of the Medical Biomechanics Program at Northwestern University Medical School. His laboratory receives support from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Education (NIDRR), and the Veterans Administration.
Title of the talk: Spasticity: Mechanisms, Quantification, and Treatment
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Prof. Dr. Walter Paulus MD serves as Head of the department of clinical neurophysiology, medical faculty of the University of Göttingen. Dr. Paulus serves as a Member of Scientific and Medical Advisory Board at EBS Technologies GmbH. Dr. Paulus is a specialist in the field of cortical plasticity and of the visual system and a world renown expert on non-invasive transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and direct current stimulation (tDCS and tACS) of the human brain.
Fondazione Santa Lucia – Rome
Francesco Lacquaniti received both an M.D. and a specialty in Neurology from the Medical Faculty of Turin University. After a post-doc in the Department of Physiology of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, he joined the Italian National Research Council in Milan where he has been Acting Director of IFCN until 1994. In 1994 he became full professor of Physiology at Cagliari University and, since 1997, he holds the same position in the Medical Faculty of the University of Rome Tor Vergata. He is the director of the Centre of Space Bio-medicine at the same University and the director of the Laboratory of Neuro-Motor Physiology at the Scientific Institute Santa Lucia Foundation (Rome). He has been elected to the Academia Europaea for his discoveries in the field of motor control, and received the Herlitzka prize for Physiology.
Title of the talk: Human locomotion: learning and re-learning
Griffith University – Brisbane
David Lloyd is Professor and Director of the Centre for Musculoskeletal Research in the Griffith Health Institute, Griffith University, and holds adjunct professorial positions in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Delaware (USA) and in Engineering and in Exercise Science at and the University of Western Australia. He is an internationally renowned computational neuromusculoskeletal biomechanist whose research has focused on the causes and prevention of musculoskeletal disease and injury. His research has involved the development of training and exercise programs to prevent lower limb injuries from occurring and slow progression of knee degeneration. This work has entailed the creation and application of EMG-informed neuromusculoskeletal models with the ensuing papers very highly cited for the field. He is an invited member of a current, funded international consortium to test and further develop these models, and currently holds other large nationally competitive grants to apply these models to understand the causes of musculoskeletal disease. David has over 135 journal articles, over 300 refereed publications, has been awarded 65 grants with over $14Million in funding.
Title of the talk: Real-time EMG-informed neuromusculosketelal models of tissue loading for neurorehabilitation
University of Twente
Prof. Dr. ir. Herman van der Kooij, (1970) received his Phd with honours (cum laude) in 2000 and is professor in Biomechatronics and Rehabilitation Technology at the Department of Biomechanical Engineering at the University of Twente, and Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. His expertise and interests are in the field of human motor control, adaptation, and learning, rehabilitation robots, diagnostic, and assistive robotics, virtual reality, rehabilitation medicine, and neuro-computational modelling. He has published over 100 publications in the area of biomechatronics and human motor control. He has directed approximately € 8.5 million in research funding over the past 10 years, from which he gained expertise in the management of (inter)national medium-scale projects. He is associate editor of IEEE TBME, member of IEEE EMBS technical committee of Biorobots and was member of several scientific program committees in the field of rehabilitation robotics, bio-robotics, and assistive devices. He is co-group leader of the technology development for new rehabilitation robotics workgroup of the Cost Action European Network on Robotics for NeuroRehabilitation and coordinator of the FP7 program Symbitron. He is member of the program committee of the Dutch IMDI core on Neurocontrol, and of the NeuroSipe programme. At the UT he is founder and head of Rehabilitation robotics laboratory that therapeutic robots for the rehabilitation of upper and lower extremities. He is founder and head of the Virtual Reality Human performance lab that combines robotic devices, motion capturing and virtual environments.
Title of the talk: Exoskeletons on the move
Northwestern University
Prof. Eric Perreault is a Professor at Northwestern University with appointments in Biomedical Engineering and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and in the Sensory Motor Performance Program at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. Eric received his B.Eng and M.Eng in Electrical Engineering from McGill University and his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University. He completed a postdoctoral fellow in Physiology at Northwestern University, and was a Visiting Professor at ETH Zürich. Eric’s research focuses on understanding the neural and biomechanical factors involved in the control of multi-joint movement and posture and how these factors are modified following neuromotor pathologies such as stroke and spinal cord injury. The goal is to provide a scientific basis for understanding normal and pathological motor control that can be used to guide rehabilitative strategies and user interface development for restoring function to individuals with motor deficits. Current applications include assistive devices for individuals who have suffered a stroke or spinal cord injury, and user interfaces for neuroprosthetic control. Currently, Eric is an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, and serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Motor Behavior and the Journal of Motor Control. He also is a member of the IEEE Technical Committee on Rehabilitation Robotics.
Title of the talk: Unravelling mechanisms underlying the automatic control of posture and movement.
Imperial College
Dr. Etienne Burdet is Reader in Human Robotics at Imperial College London. He has obtained a M.S. in Mathematics in 1990, a M.S. in Physics in 1991, and a Ph.D. in Robotics in 1996, all from ETH-Zurich. He was a postdoctoral fellow with Ted Milner (McGill, Canada), Ed Colgate (Northwestern, USA) and Mitsuo Kawato (ATR, Japan), between 1996 and 1999, where he did research in neurophysiology and Human-robot Interaction, and Assistant Professor in Robotics at the National University of Singapore from 1999 to 2004. He was invited Professor at NUS from 2005 to 2009, and at Paris VI from 2009 to 2011. Dr. Burdet does research around his interest in human-machine interaction. He is using an approach integrating neuroscience and robotics to: i) investigate human motor control and ii) design efficient assistive devices and virtual reality based training for rehabilitation and surgery.
Title of the talk: Interaction control in humans and for robot
Fondazione Santa Lucia, Italy
Dr. Marco Molinari (Neurologist, Physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist, PhD in Neuroscience) is the Director of Neurorehabilitation Clinical Unit A and of Experimental Neurorehabilitation Lab from the Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome. Neurorehabilitation clinical unit A is a clinical ward devoted to neurological rehabilitation in which subacute stroke patients receive a complete multidisciplinary rehabilitative treatment. Dr. Molinari is author of over 100 articles published on indexed journals, he is associated editor of Brain Research Bulletin and The Cerebellum. His research has been always focused on brain plasticity mechanisms and functional recovery both at basic science and clinical levels.
Title of the talk: A cell biology approach to network damage and recovery in brain lesions