Research Team: Professor Tim Carroll, Professor Guy Wallis, Dr Samuele Contemori, Professor Gerald Loeb, Professor Brian Corneil
Funding Body: ARC Discovery Project
Years: 2024-2026
This project will test a radical new hypothesis about how the human brain generates visually guided behaviour. Conventional thinking assumes that visuomotor control of limb movements occurs exclusively within the cerebral cortex. However, the project team's recent observations of extremely rapid visually guided muscle activity strongly imply that the human brain controls reaching movements via more primitive midbrain and brainstem structures. The project's hypotheses challenge long-standing ideas about the functional organisation of the human brain and may have wide-ranging implications for the design of human-machine interfaces as well as training protocols in rehabilitation, industry, and sport.
