Alumni of the Laboratory for Computational Motor Control

Maurice Smith

Maurice Smith, 1995 Maurice Smith, 1996 Kurt Thoroughman, Reza Shadmehr, and Maurice Smith. Cancun, 1997 Maurice Smith and Nikhil Bhushan, 1997 Sam Khanderian, Reza Shadmehr, Tie Wang, and Maurice Smith. June 1997, Niagara Falls. Maurice Smith, 2004 Maurice Smith, Lab dinner, San Diego 2007. Maurice Smith and Haiyin Chen-Harris. Lab reunion dinner, San Diego 2010.

Maurice was the second graduate student to join the lab. He joined in 1995, after having completed a triple major in Mathematics, Biomedical Engineering, and Electrical Engineering from Vanderbilt University. He was instrumental in building much of the robotic apparatus that became the basis for our experiments. He was an MD/PhD student, enrolled in the Biomedical Engineering program as well as the Medical Student training program at Hopkins. He changed the direction of the lab by studying how diseases that affect the basal ganglia or the cerebellum affect control of movements. He invented the two-state model of motor adaptation, a significant breakthrough that has helped unravel the multiple neural basis of motor learning. He completed his PhD on 12/2000 with the thesis Error feedback control in Huntington's Disease and Cerebellar Degeneration.  Maurice won the David Israel Macht Award in recognition of outstanding scientific work by a doctoral student in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He completed the MD program in 2003, and stayed on to do a postdoc in the lab until 2005. He subsequently became an Assistant Professor at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. The results of his thesis and postdoctoral research were published in the following papers: Effects of cerebellar thalamus disruption on adaptive control of reaching. H Chen, SE Hua, MA Smith, FA Lenz, and R Shadmehr (2006) Cerebral Cortex, 16:1462-1473.  Abstract Citations Interacting adaptive processes with different timescales underlie short-term motor learning.  MA Smith, A Ghazizadeh, and R Shadmehr (2006) PLoS Biology 4:e179.  Abstract Synopsis Citations Dissociable effects of the implicit and explicit memory systems on learning control of reaching.  EJ Hwang, MA Smith, and R Shadmehr (2006) Experimental Brain Research, 173:425-437.  Abstract Citations Adaptation and generalization in acceleration dependent force fields. EJ Hwang, MA Smith, and R Shadmehr (2006)   Experimental Brain Research 169:496-506.  Abstract Citations Intact ability to learn internal models of arm dynamics in Huntington's disease but not cerebellar degeneration. MA Smith and R Shadmehr (2005) Journal of Neurophysiology 93:2809-2821. Abstract Citations A gain-field encoding of limb position and velocity in the internal model of arm dynamics. EJ Hwang, O Donchin, MA Smith, and R Shadmehr (2003) PLoS Biology 1(2):209-220.  Abstract Supplementary-material Synopsis Citations Motor disorder in Huntington's disease begins as a dysfunction in error feedback control. MA Smith, J Brandt, and R Shadmehr (2000) Nature 403:544-549.  Abstract News&Views Citations Error correction and the basal ganglia. MA Smith and R Shadmehr (2000) Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4:367-369. Citations