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Yoky Matsuoka, PhD

Neural Engineering Related Work:
Building a robot-human closed loop system to alter the neural control of movement as a way to rehabilitate, assist, and enhance human motor control and learning capabilities.

Research Description:
Using the experimental results, we not only further our understanding in neural control, but we also construct assistive and training robotic devices that intimately interact / interface with the users. These devices include haptic, prosthetic, implantable, and wearable devices.

We are interested in the neural control alterations due to the robot-human closed loop control. Recent findings suggest that animals are capable of performing tasks that are normally impossible when they are provided with artificial neural feedback. We are interested in extracting neuromuscular parameters of human subjects during training, manipulating the parameters externally, and applying artificial force or electrical feedback. Experiments can then be performed to determine the effect of artificial feedback on human motor control and learning.