Visual Control of Motor Behavior

     The senses evolved largely to control our behavior in the world. An important special case of this is the use of sensory information to directly control ongoing motor behavior.

     We are studying how the brain uses visual information to control goal-directed hand movements such as grasping objects, placing objects on surfaces and pointing to touch objects in the world. We are studying how the brain uses visual feedback from the moving hand "on-line" to guide movements and how it uses 3D information about the shape, size, orientation and position of objects in the world to guide movements toward the objects.

     We have developed a 3D virtual reality lab to support these studies. The lab includes tools for displaying virtual images of objects in 3D, for positioning real objects for subjects to grasp within the virtual environment, and for recording subjects hand and eye movements while performing natural motor tasks.

[Publications]