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 | Biography |  |
Stephan Riek is an Australian Research Council, Queen Elizabeth II Principal Research Fellow. He re-joined the School in 2003 after time at Charles Sturt University and the University of New South Wales. Stephan is from Canada and completed his undergraduate and postgraduate education at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, with degrees in Kinesiology, Neurophysiology and Biomechanics. Research Interests
Everyday we use our limbs to interact with a variety of objects. These objects have various mechanical characteristics (dynamics), which require the human motor system to provide appropriate control. Dr Riek's research seeks to understand how the brain, in both normal and disease states, learns new limb dynamics as we interact with a novel mechanical environments. His expertise in the fields of biomechanics, electrophysiology and motor control provide the broad portfolio of skills required to develop a full understanding of the interactions between the neural control mechanisms and the mechanical properties of the musculo-skeletal apparatus, which form two essential and inseparable components of human system. Dr Riek's research program has contributed to the idea that the intrinsic mechanics of the limb represent strong constraints on the ability of the central nervous system to coordinate and control movement. Several key publications exemplify this contribution. The first (Riek et al., 1992), examines the issue of spatial versus muscular dependencies on bimanual coordination. More recently, increasingly comprehensive experimental techniques have been used to examine the constraints on coordination using advanced neurophysiological measures such as H-reflex recording and transcranial magnetic stimulation (Carson, Riek & Bawa, 1998; Carson & Riek, 2000) as well as mechanical manipulations of limb dynamics (Riek & Carson, 2001; Carson & Riek, 2001; Mackey et al., 2002).
His most current project, funded by the ARC, involves the use of repetitive brain stimulation to selectively block the contribution of various cortical regions during the learning of a new motor skill and later, the recall of that skill. This will allow the determination of which areas of the cortex are critical to motor skill acquisition.
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