Markus Baumann
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Cortical Representation of Hand grasping movements
Many brain areas are involved in the generation of hand grasping movements. Specialized areas in the premotor and parietal cortex play a dominant role for the high-level preparation of hand movements. Whereas in motor area M1, the coding is based on a highly topographic map, in premotor and parietal areas, where for instance the transformation of sensual information into executable motor plans takes place, the coding is more complex. Recordings in trained primates will help to learn characteristics of this representation.
The capacity to plan hand movements is preserved in patients with spinal cord injury, so it may be possible to read out and interpret these signals and use them to guide a prosthetic hand. With this goal in mind, we investigate how hand movement planning signals are generated and how these movement plans can be decoded to control a robotic hand.