The Umeå Cognitive Science Seminar invites you to a a seminar with Michael Dimitriou, associate professor at the Department of Medical and Translational Biology, who will speak on the topic of "The Intelligent Periphery: How Goals Reshape the Body's Sensors".
All interested are welcome to attend this seminar.
The human nervous system is typically portrayed as a hierarchy in which the brain commands and the peripheral nervous system obeys — muscles contract for action, and sensors faithfully report the mechanical consequences. In this talk I will argue that this picture is incomplete. Drawing on recordings from single sensory axons in awake, actively moving humans, combined with electromyographic and robotic perturbation paradigms, I will show that peripheral muscle sensory organs are not passive transducers but tuneable signal-processing devices whose output depends on context, goals, and experience. I will discuss what this implies for our understanding of perception, action, motor learning, and the neural basis of sensorimotor decline with ageing.
Michael Dimitriou completed his PhD at the Department of Integrative Medical Biology at Umeå University, where he studied the neurophysiology of muscle receptors. He subsequently held a postdoctoral position at the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge under Daniel Wolpert, investigating motor control and motor learning using robotic manipulanda. He returned to Umeå, where he has been leading his own research group for more than a decade, and has for several years been employed as an Associate Professor at the Department of Medical and Translational Biology.
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