Reza Shadmehr home page

Reza Shadmehr

Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Professor of Neuroscience
Johns Hopkins University
720 Rutland Ave, 410 Traylor Building
Baltimore, MD 21205-2195

Scientific genealogy
Directions to the lab

Our work focuses on understanding how the human brain controls movements of the arm and the eyes. We study movements of healthy people, as well as people with neurological disorders. We use mathematics, robotics, and brain imaging to estimate the functions of the cerebellum, the basal ganglia, the parietal cortex, and the motor cortex during voluntary movements. We have two long-term aims:

To understand the basic function of the motor structures of the brain.
To help patients recover some of their lost motor function through focused training of the remaining, healthy portions of their brain.

Resources:
Lecture notes
fMRI Compatible Robots
Robust fMRI data analysis
Text book: Computational Neurobiology of Reaching and Pointing
Annual meeting: Advances in Computational Motor Control
BME PhD: For prospective graduate students

Email
Office location		Traylor Building, Room 410
Laboratory location		Traylor Building, Room 416
Phone (office)		410 614-2458
Phones (lab)		410 614-3424 410 614-8266
FAX		410 502-2826

Administrative Assistant		Chris Blackledge
Phone		410 502-5928
		cblackledge AT jhu.edu

During a typical experiment, we measure motor control as people learn to interact with novel tools.	We measure eye movements and quantify how the brain integrates visual information with proprioceptive information.	We use transcranial magnetic stimulation to briefly disrupt neural processing of information in the brain to assess how it impacts control of movements.
We use functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure correlates of neural activity in the brain during tool use.	We use positron emission tomography to measure blood flow in the brain, a correlates of neural activity, during adaptive control of reaching.	In collaboration with Dr. Fred Lenz in Hopkins Neurosurgery, we record from single cells in the brain during adaptive control of reaching.
A two-arm robotic system to help investigate coordination and control in healthy people and in patients with neurological disorders.	In collaboration with Dr. David Zee in Hopkins Neurology, we measure eye trajectory during saccades in order to better understand control of eye movements in healthy people and in patients with neurological disorders.