Forum for Science, Industry and Business

Locust study promises new insights into limb control

Dr Tom Matheson, a Reader in Neurobiology, and Professor Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, a Professor of Bioengineering, have joined their areas of expertise together to begin this innovative research. They were recently awarded over £800,000 from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) to carry out the analysis of the sensory-motor control of limb movements.

The study will involve recording, analysing and manipulating the activity of individual nerve cells in locusts whilst they make aimed limb movements. This research will help to uncover the general principles of organisation that underpin all limb movements. At the same time the research will develop new methods that can be applied to the analysis of human brain signals.

Accidents and medical disorders that impair or prevent controlled limb movements have profound effects on the quality of life of the patients affected. Through this study, Dr Matheson and Professor Quian Quiroga seek to understand how the brain controls limb movements so that it is possible to better understand what goes wrong in disease processes, and to develop better medical interventions such as prosthetic limbs that are controlled by the activity of the patient’s brain.

Dr Matheson commented:

“We are very excited to have been given the opportunity by the BBSRC to set up and develop these new techniques. It is a great opportunity to combine the two areas of expertise of our labs in Biology and Engineering to address some very difficult but very interesting questions.”

With this research, Professor Quian Quiroga builds on his previous work of isolating the activity of single nerve cells from an overall response.

Professor Quian Quiroga commented:

“This grant from the BBSRC gives us the unique opportunity to study the activity of large population of neurons in a system that has been very well studied by my colleague, Dr Tom Matheson. On the one hand, it will give us the chance to further develop methodologies to study large neural populations, and on the other hand, our research will likely contribute to our knowledge of aimed movements in a system that is relatively simple compared to other animals and humans. This knowledge may contribute to the development of neural prostheses to be used by paralyzed patients, which is clearly an area of major significance.”

Peter Thorley | alfa
Further information:
http://www.le.ac.uk

Im Focus: Color effects from transparent 3D-printed nanostructures

New design tool automatically creates nanostructure 3D-print templates for user-given colors
Scientists present work at prestigious SIGGRAPH conference

Most of the objects we see are colored by pigments, but using pigments has disadvantages: such colors can fade, industrial pigments are often toxic, and...

Im Focus: Unraveling the nature of 'whistlers' from space in the lab

A new study sheds light on how ultralow frequency radio waves and plasmas interact

Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles present new research on a curious cosmic phenomenon known as "whistlers" -- very low frequency packets...

Im Focus: New interactive machine learning tool makes car designs more aerodynamic

Scientists develop first tool to use machine learning methods to compute flow around interactively designable 3D objects. Tool will be presented at this year’s prestigious SIGGRAPH conference.

When engineers or designers want to test the aerodynamic properties of the newly designed shape of a car, airplane, or other object, they would normally model...

Im Focus: Robots as 'pump attendants': TU Graz develops robot-controlled rapid charging system for e-vehicles

Researchers from TU Graz and their industry partners have unveiled a world first: the prototype of a robot-controlled, high-speed combined charging system (CCS) for electric vehicles that enables series charging of cars in various parking positions.

Global demand for electric vehicles is forecast to rise sharply: by 2025, the number of new vehicle registrations is expected to reach 25 million per year....

Im Focus: The “TRiC” to folding actin

Proteins must be folded correctly to fulfill their molecular functions in cells. Molecular assistants called chaperones help proteins exploit their inbuilt folding potential and reach the correct three-dimensional structure. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (MPIB) have demonstrated that actin, the most abundant protein in higher developed cells, does not have the inbuilt potential to fold and instead requires special assistance to fold into its active state. The chaperone TRiC uses a previously undescribed mechanism to perform actin folding. The study was recently published in the journal Cell.

Actin is the most abundant protein in highly developed cells and has diverse functions in processes like cell stabilization, cell division and muscle...