We aim at understanding how the brain controls our movements and how it learns to perform new ones by means of detailed kinematic analyses of movement trajectories. We focus on age- and disease-related effects on these sensorimotor processes.
Feb 2024
The preprint of
Pauline and Koen Not
fleeting but lasting: Limited influence of aging on implicit adaptative
motor learning and its short-term retention has been positively
recommended by the PeerCommunity in Health
and Movement Sciences. Recommendation reads like : “A
main strength of the current paper is the rigor applied to testing this
question. The authors provide robust, converging evidence from multiple
analyses and statistical methods, and control for confounds both
statistically and experimentally.”.
Summer 2023
2023 will be
an amazing year in terms of paper as several projects are being
completed and papers accepted. Veerle De Rond has a third paper accepted
on muscle activity of lower back muscles during weight-shifting: Lower
back muscle activity during weight-shifting is affected by ageing and
dual-tasking. Britt Vandoorent has a first PhD paper accepted:
Effect
of transcranial direct current stimulation on learning in older adults
with and without Parkinson’s disease: A systematic review with
meta-analysis, Finally, the preprint with the group of
Konstantina Kilteni has been accepted at JNeurophysiology: Aging
exerts a limited influence on the perception of self-generated and
externally generated touch. Congrats to all those involved.
May 2023
Our C2-project
entitled MAeSTRO: neuro-Musculosketetal ASsessement and Training of
Older adults for safe (e-)cycling has been awarded. Two new
PhD-students will be recruited. This is a collaboration with my
colleagues Friedl De Groote and Jannique Van Uffelen.
May 2023
New
meta-science paper issued from an online collaboration and led by
Olivier Corneille (UCLouvain, Belgium): Point of View:
Beware ‘persuasive communication devices’ when writing and reading
scientific articles. Twitter thread here
May 2023
New paper led
by Sanne Broeder: A
smartphone-based tapping task as a marker of medication response in
Parkinson’s Disease: a proof-of-concept study.
May 2023
New paper led
by Veerle de Rond: Test-retest
reliability of functional near-infrared spectroscopy during a
finger-tapping and postural task in healthy older adults.
May 2023
Congratulations
to Veerle de Rond for her PhD thesis entitled Shifting the gear on
shifting weight: behavioral, neural and neuromuscular correlates of
ageing. Her main promotor is Alice Nieuwboer.
April 2023
Just back
from the NCM conference in Victoria where we talked about our research.
Anouck Matthijs presented a poster entitled ” Can physical
resilience explain the variability in age-related changes in motor
function? “. Anda De witte had a poster on”
Cerebellum-Dependent Motor Prediction and Adaptation in Healthy
Old Adults versus Young Adults “. The poster of Stien Van De
Plas was about” Aging is detrimental to sensory function. Or is
it? Let’s have a look at touch and proprioception. “. Finally,
JJ organized a panel session on” Age- and disease-related
changes in the cerebellum impact motor function “. Other
speakers included Di Cao (Hopkins), Jovin Jacobs (Champalimaud) and
Alanna Watt (Mc Gill). JJO gave a talk entiteld”Is there a
cerebellar motor reserve “.
March 2023
New preprint
led by Lili Timar from the team of Konstantina Kilteni: Aging
exerts a limited influence on the perception of self-generated and
externally generated touch. It was a real pleasure to
collaborate with them on this topic. This is a very strong paper
methodologically (high sample size, pre-registered).
March 2023
New paper led
by Sanne Broeder: Transcranial
direct current stimulation enhances motor learning in Parkinson’s
disease: a randomized controlled trial.
December 2022
Congratulations to Leen Saenen for defending her PhD entitled: Upper
limb sensory processing: development of a robotic paradigm.
summer 2022
JJ goes to
Canada for his sabbatical until summer 2023. He will work with Andrew
Pruszynski, Joern Diedrichsen and Paul Gribble at Western University
(London,ON, Canada)
May-June 2022
Bike
project will not be funded by an internal grant of KU Leuven, at least
not this year. But comments are encouraging and give us food for
thoughts. It’s rejection season, no fellowship from FWO to Anouck either
(not yet ;-) )
1st of May 2022
We are
sad to see Matheus Maia Pacheco leaving our group but we wish a lot of
success for his new adventure as an assistant Professor at the
University of Porto in Portugal.
March-April 2022
Many
grants and fellowship were submitted:
March 2022
The first
pre-print of our bike project with Maarten Afschrift, Anouck Mathijs and
Friedl De Groote is out: Turning the head while
biking makes older people lose cycling direction and balance
November 2021
Just
before Christmas, the first paper of Manasa Parthasharathy has been
accepted for publication at the Journal of Neuropshysiology: Increased
upper-limb sensory attenuation with age
November 2021
We waved
goodbye to Manasa Parthasharathy who became Business Development Manager
at icometrix
Summer 2021
Our team is
growing. We welcome Anda De Witte on the 1st of July and Anouck Matthijs
on the 1st of September. They will work on the FWO-funded project: “Is
there a motor reserve in the cerebellum”. Exciting times!
23 July 2021
The last
paper from the PhD of Koen Vandevoorde has been accepted for publication
in the Journal of Neurophysiology: “Does
proprioceptive acuity influence the extent of implicit sensorimotor
adaptation in young and older adults?”. This is the last piece of a
very enjoyable and fruitful collaboration.
31 May 2021
Congrats to
Veerle for the acceptance of her first first-author paper entitled “Compromised
Brain Activity With Age During a Game-Like Dynamic Balance Task: Single-
vs. Dual-Task Performance”. Well done Veerle !
22nd of March, 2021
Last
paper from the PhD thesis of Guy Rens has been accepted at
Neuropsychologia: Motor resonance is modulated by an object’s weight
distribution. Well done Guy!
Preprint
15th of March, 2021
New
preprint with Ryan Morehead (Leeds University, UK): A
Synthesis of the Many Errors and Learning Processes of Visuomotor
Adaptation.
The tweeprint
made by
Ryan is available here: https://twitter.com/rmhead/status/1371669385367195648
February/March, 2021
I
am recruiting two PhD students to work on a FWO-funded project focused
on cerebellar motor functions, aging and structural imaging. Please
apply here: https://www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jobsite/jobs/56170382
February/March, 2021
Dante Mantini and Jean-Jacques are thrilled to welcome Matheus Pacheco
as a
post-doc. Matheus will use EEG to unravel age-related changes in error
processing.
January 2021
JJ was
interviewed on Open Science. You can read the interview here: An
open scientist helps research and himself or herself to move
forward
January 20th 2021
Congrats to Guy Rens who got his paper entitled “Lift observation
conveys object weight distribution but partly enhances predictive lift
planning” accepted for publication in the Journal of
Neurophysiology.
Preprint
December, 2020
Jean-Jacques got a grant from the FWO
(Flemish Research Foundation) to work on a project entitled: “Is
there a motor reserve in the cerebellum”. This project focuses on
measuring age-related changes in motor function based on a large task
battery and included structural MRI as well.
November, 2020
Paper
with Friedl De Groote
,
Stefanie Vandevyvere and Florian Vanhevel accepted by Gait & Posture
(after a very long review process that did not really change the paper)
(paper).
Preprint is available here.
Data and
code are on
the Open Science Framework (LINK)
October, 2020
We have
several preprints
out
there:
Manasa Parthasharathy: Increased
upper-limb sensory attenuation with age
Koen Vandevoorde: Does
somatosensory acuity influence the extent of internal model
recalibration in young and older adults?
Guy Rens: Motor resonance is
modulated by an object’s weight distribution
Octobre 1st, 2020
Stien
Van De Plas starts her PhD today. Welcome Stien! She will work on the
role of somatosensation on motor control for the next four years.
Co-promotor is Dante Mantini.
September 20, 2020
Two
new papers published in the Special Issue of the Journal of
Computational Neuroscience dedicated to Lance Optican. See the
publication page.
July 1, 2020
Koen
Vandevoorde’s paper was published in Journal of Neurophysiology (paper). Preprint is
available here
June 15, 2020
The
departement of Movement Sciences is recruiting two tenure-track
professors:
motor control and neuroimaging: link
motor control and performance in competitive and elite sports: link
Come and join us!!
June 3, 2020
Together
with Prof. Dante Mantini, we are recruiting a PhD student to work on the
influence of a decline in somatosensory function on motor control and
learning. Vacancy is available here
Note, the candidate has to be fluent in Dutch as s/he has to act as
teaching assistant in that language
June 1st, 2020
Never
forget to submit your paper as preprint first! We did forget to do it
for this one but after being 4 months under review at
Gait&Posture, we decided that it was enough. Preprint
entitled “Validation of a smartphone embedded inertial measurement unit
for measuring postural stability in older adults” is available here
May 27, 2020
Together
with Prof. Dante Mantini, we are recruiting a post-doc to work on EEG
and motor adaptation. Vacancy is available here
May 9, 2020
Koen
Vandevoorde got his paper accepted in Journal of Neurophysiology.
Preprint is available here
March 31, 2020
Congrats
to Guy Rens who got his paper entitled Sensorimotor
Expectations Bias Motor Resonance during Observation of Object Lifting:
The Causal Role of pSTS accepted in Journal of Neuroscience.
Januari 20, 2020
With
Prof. Friedl De Groote, we submitted a paper entitled “Validation of
a smartphone embedded inertial measurement unit for measuring postural
stability in older adults” to Gait&Posture.