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Richard Di Fabio, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation E-mail: difab001@umn.edu

Research Interests:

How do people avoid obstacles in their environment or aim their limbs to accurately step toward or over objects in their walking path? The mechanisms that the central nervous system uses to accomplish these tasks are not clear. Theories of optic flow and visual anchors are available to help us solve these problems, but more work is needed fully understand the neural mechanisms responsible for obstacle avoidance behavior. The problem of slips, trips and falls is most prominent in older populations and falls have serious consequences for the elderly who live in our communities. Much of our work is dedicated to understanding the influence of aging on the visual, cognitive, and motor mechanisms that contribute to trips and falls. This work involves techniques from the disciplines of psychology and motor learning that measure the resolution of visual attention, inattention blindness, eye-head-body coordination, and the nature of saccadic eye movements that localize visual targets in the environment for effective motor strategies that allow people to safely ambulate through a cluttered world.

Selected Publications:

Di Fabio RP, Zampieri C, Tuite P. Gaze Control and Foot Kinematics During Stair Climbing: Characteristics Leading to Fall Risk in Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. Phys Ther. 2007 Dec 11.

Di Fabio RP, Zampieri C, Tuite P. Gaze-shift strategies during functional activity in progressive supranuclear palsy. Exp Brain Res. 2007 Apr;178(3):351-62.

Zampieri C, Di Fabio RP. Progressive supranuclear palsy: disease profile and rehabilitation strategies. Phys Ther. 2006 Jun;86(6):870-80.

Di Fabio RP, Zampieri C, Tuite P, Konczak J.Association between vestibuloocular reflex suppression during smooth movements of the head and attention deficit in progressive supranuclear palsy. Mov Disord. 2006 Jul;21(7):910-5.

Schmitt J, Di Fabio RP. The validity of prospective and retrospective global change criterion measures.Arch Phys Med Rehabil. 2005 Dec;86(12):2270-6.

Di Fabio RP, Zampieri C, Henke J, Olson K, Rickheim D, Russell M. Influence of elderly executive cognitive function on attention in the lower visual field during step initiation. Gerontology. 2005 Mar-Apr;51(2):94-107.

Recent Graduate Students

Alongkot Emasithi (PhD 2001 UM Rehabilitation Science), Khon Kaen University, Thailand

John S Schmitt (PhD 2002 UM Rehabilitation Science), St Katherine's University, Minneapolis, MN

John F Greany (PhD 2005 UM Rehabilitation Science) University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.