Abstract
Bimanual coordination has been studied extensively for decades and the vast majority of work has been reporting a strong coupling between the two arms following the proposition by Kelso et al. (1979) who hypothesized that a single ‘super-ordinate’ controller is recruited during bilateral tasks. Given evidence of hemispheric lateralization of motor control and resulting significant interlimb differences in intralimb coordination (Sainburg et al., Dynamic Dominance Hypthesis), it is interesting to further our understanding of interplay between these two mechanisms of neural control of movement. Does a single ‘super-ordinate’ controller take over during bimanual coordination changing intralimb coordination of one or both arms? During this talk, I will present evidence suggesting individual control of each arm during bimanual coordination, i.e. no coupling. Namely, interlimb differences do persist in bimanual movements coordination and each limb cooperates in compensating task errors, thus stabilizing task performance, i.e. synergy. Furthermore, these synergies can be modified fairly rapidly, even in mild stroke patients whose bimanual coordination also reveals evidence that predictive mechanisms of bimanual coordination depend on the left hemisphere, consistently with Dynamic Dominance Hypothesis.

About the Speaker
Dr. Andrzej Przybyla (Dre) is a new Associate Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy at the University of North Georgia. He completed his PhD and the first postdoctoral experience in spine biomechanics at the University of Bristol, U.K. (2000-06), under the supervision of Drs. Michael Adams and Patricia Dolan. Following this, he joined Dr. Robert Sainburg’s laboratory at the Penn State University (2006-15) focusing his research on hemispheric lateralization of motor functions, i.e. bimanual coordination, motor decisions, stroke rehabilitation. He spent one year (2015-16) in the School of Sports and Exercises Sciences at the Liverpool John Moores University, U.K., working on clinical gait biomechanics and motor behavior. His research focuses on neural mechanisms of movement control and motor decision making with strong emphasis in applications to motor adaptation and learning, i.e. physical therapy, athletic training, aging.

Physiology Brownbag Seminars
The Physiology Group in the School of Biological Sciences hosts Brownbag Lunchtime Seminars twice a month on Wednesdays at noon in room 1253 of the Applied Physiology Building located at 555 14th Street NW, Atlanta, GA 30318. You are welcome to bring a lunch and join us as we ruminate with us on topics in Physiology! A full listing of seminars can be found at http://pwp.gatech.edu/bmmc/seminars/.