We use our hands and arms countless times every day – skillfully, yet effortlessly. By using the upper limbs as a model system and combining behavioral, perceptual, and cognitive tasks I have been able to uncover how the senses influence motor control in both healthy participants and special populations (see my work on autism, multiple sclerosis, head trauma, and Parkinson’s Disease).
In a recent study, Wang et al. (J Neurophysiol 113: 1989–2001, 2015) used a precision grip force control task to unveil the contribution of feedforward and feedback mechanisms to sensorimotor dysfunction in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Impairment …
The performance of patients with vascular parkinsonism (VPD) on a reach-to-grasp task was compared with that of patients affected by idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (IPD) and age-matched control subjects. The aim of the study was to determine how …
The goal of the present experiment was twofold identifying similarities and differences between flavour memory and visual memory mechanisms and investigating whether kinematics could serve as an implicit measure for food selection. To test flavour …
Observing the actions of others prompts the motor system to perform a similar action. However, visual cues are not the only source of sensory information for the motor system, which is affected by stimuli presented in all modalities even when they …
_Background_ Autism spectrum disorders comprise a range of neurodevelopmental pathologies characterized, among other symptoms, by impaired social interactions. Individuals with this diagnosis are reported to often identify people by repetitively …
Many reports in the literature indicate that idiopathic Parkinson's disease (IPD) patients have substantial olfactory dysfunctions even before motor symptoms become evident. It has not yet been clarified, however, if some form of implicit olfactory …
To investigate implicit olfactory abilities in a group of anosmic traumatic brain injured (TBI) patients, an olfactomotor priming paradigm was administered. A group of matched normosmic/mildly microsmic TBI patients and a group of neurologically …
Research on multisensory integration during natural tasks has revealed how chemical senses contribute to plan and control movements. An aspect which has yet to be investigated regards whether the motor representations evoked by chemosensory stimuli, …
_Background_ Evidence suggests that subliminal odorants influence human perception and behavior. It has been hypothesized that the human sex-steroid derived compound 4,16-androstadien-3-one (androstadienone) functions as a human chemosignal. The most …