Dear all,
Barbara has asked that I introduce myself, which I am delighted to do.
I am a lecturer in bio-engineering at the School of Physiotherapy in
Western Australia. We have a 4 year course here with around 80 students in
each year. I also teach occupational therapists and podiatrists. I am also
a bit of an odd-ball in that I practice as a medical practitioner as well,
although my main interest is bio-engineering research.
An Honours student and I just finished a research project with the
Australian Neuromuscular Research Institute, and funded by the PD
Association of Western Australia. We looked at dynamic control of the
centre of gravity in PD with a Neurocom Balance Master system. Basically we
found that people with PD have the same timing but smaller amplitudes of
movement when tracking a moving target. This was a bit of a surprise to us
at first, but we now understand it by modelling the motor control system as
a typical engineering control system. It looks like people with PD reduce
the loop gain and increase damping to prevent instability (tremor), which
results in the lower amplitude movements.
We are presenting the work at the Penn State conference for the 100th
anniversary of Bernstein in August, which promises to be a wonderful chance
to meet all the famous people in motor control research - maybe I might
meet some of you there...?
Chris
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Dr. Chris Kirtley MB ChB, PhD [log in to unmask]
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Lecturer, Bio-engineering --_ / \
/ \
School of Physiotherapy, Perth #_.---._/
Curtin University of Technology, V
GPO Box U1987,
Perth 6001, Tel +61 9 351 3649
Western Australia. Fax +61 9 351 3636
WWW: http://www.curtin.edu.au/curtin/dept/physio/pt/staff/kirtley/
Internet Relay Chat: irc.curtin.edu.au (port 6667) "bio-engineering"
NetPhone: IP address 34311.180.105
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