The focus of the seminar series is to call for experts related to academia and research in the areas related to biomechanics, variability, motor disorders, physical therapy, and related studies.

Presentation Title: Evidence for the stability-agility tradeoff in human movements

Presentation Abstract:

Stability and agility are antagonistic features of motor systems. It follows that high stability is desirable when one aims to maintain consistent, steady-state movements. But high stability would impair rapid voluntary changes to movement patterns. Do humans modulate stability of current actions depending on expected agility demands?  
This talk will provide evidence in support of the stability-agility tradeoff. The first part of this talk is about how humans alter their steady-state gait to navigate effectively, and how healthy aging could influence these alterations. Dr. Ambike will describe patterns and tradeoffs in biomechanical variables during adaptive gait. The work quantifies and compares covariance structures in various biomechanical variables as young and older persons cross obstacles. In contrast to the impressive body of work that identifies locomotor control strategies by observing responses to external perturbations, the approach here is to observe voluntary changes to steady-state gait that humans make while navigating hazards. The second part of the talk is about the impact of uncertainty on the modulation of action stability in service of agility. Dr. Ambike will describe surprising anticipatory changes to the synergy in the finger forces when individuals contend with uncertainty in the upcoming motor task. 

The long-term goal of this work is to identify how motor synergies are modulated to in various contexts. Currently, the work is theoretical. But potential applications to real-world movements, including therapeutic outcomes, is rather obvious.   

About the speaker:

Dr. Ambike completed his PhD in Mechanical Engineer at The Ohio State University in 2012. He spent the next three plus years at Penn State working on motor synergies and studying their manifestation in manual behaviors. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Health and Kinesiology department at Purdue University. At Purdue, Dr. Ambike has expanded the scope of his research to include both human prehension and locomotion across the adult age span, and in individuals with Parkinson’s Disease. He is interested in how aging and pathology influences the stability of various movements, and how stability and agility - two movement attributes that can often be antagonistic - are traded off in activities of daily living.