Interview
From the fingers to the brain
Name: Roland S Johansson
Roland S. Johansson is an internationally renowned researcher. He became well known by studying our most obvious and instinctive movements: Handling something with the hands.
The coffee cup’s almost unconscious path to the mouth during the interview requires an unbroken flow of information about shape, position, friction, heat, etc. from 30,000 nerve fibres in the hand. A complicated and efficient control system is at work here that Roland has studied for more than 30 years.
Can the human control system be emulated? It is not by chance that Roland has been recruited to three international projects to tie together modern technology and mankind. For example, in the U.S. a major effort is underway with the goal of developing a functioning hand/arm prosthesis within four years – and by “functioning” we mean that it should be perceived as a part of the body. Together with an Italian group, Roland is among the only contributors outside the U.S.
“There is a parallel to President Kennedy’s vision in the 1960s to send a man to the moon within 10 years, but I think this is more difficult,” comments Roland quietly.
In the 1980s, his group conducted experiments on grasping and lifting various objects. They changed weight, friction, etc. while they measured all of the signals and forces they could.
“We ultimately obtained a type of “black box” model. If one understands what the brain has to control and what signals it receives, conclusions can be made about what problems it actually solves. In my opinion, it happens too often that brain researchers work without such an understanding.”
This view is of course used to identify and categorise different objects, but around 2000, Roland’s group discovered a less obvious aspect:
“The gaze shows where the brain’s attention lies – and this generally happens before the movement. If I thought I would put the coffee cup down over there, I would first look there. The gaze goes there first, it “successively marks the sub-targets of the plan of action” as we usually express it.”
In Nature 2003, Roland turned the rotisserie a turn and used the registration of the visual direction to show that we understand others’ actions by the same process being played back in our own brain at the same time.
His own description of the brain is “a ‘machine’ for learning skills and knowledge that makes it possible for us to foresee consequences of our actions and flexibly adapt them”.
Learning or not, there are naturally major differences between individuals with regard to what the hands can do. “It is difficult to know how much is training and how much is skill,” he says:
“I am often asked about differences between right and left hand or between men and women. But I actually see all of that as details. There is still so much we do not know about the fundamental aspects…”
Perhaps that is how a researcher should think.
Name: Roland S. Johansson
Profession: Professor of Physiology since 1988, Ph.D. 1981, M.D. 1978.
Family: Married to Eva. Three grown children.
Hobby: Carving/tinkering, sports car, literature
Leisure time: Car travel and summer cottage near Laisälven River in Lappland
Other: Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences since 2004; chosen for the “Excellence Grant” from the Swedish Research Council in 2002; Fellowship Award from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science in 2001; the Corpus Student Union Pedagogical Prize (for doctoral education) in 2000; the Göran Gustafsson Prize in Medicine in 1996; the Eric K. Fernström Prize, Umeå, 1983; the Mångberg Prize, Umeå, 1979.
