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Martha Flanders, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Neuroscience E-mail: fland001@umn.edu

Research Interests:

How does the nervous system generate the complex patterns of muscle activity that subserve our everyday movements? I study arm and hand movement to understand the neural mechanisms of motor pattern generation. We record the neural activation of muscles and relate the patterns of activation to the type of movement performed. When a human subject reaches out to touch a target, the pattern of muscle activity depends on where the target is and how fast the subject reaches for it. When a person shapes the hand around an object, hand muscles are activated in a highly distributed manner.

Current projects in my laboratory include: 1) studies of arm and hand movement sequences, and 2) studies of the multidimensional recruitment patterns of single motor units. In collaboration with Dr. John F. Soechting, I also study: 3) the process of manipulating objects with the hand, and 4) eye movement and hand-eye coordination.

Directional tuning of biceps motor units: as force direction departs from the unit's best direction, the unit is recruited later. Each 2 s trace is aligned at force onset and was recorded with intramuscular electrodes, as a human subject produced force against an immovable transducer strapped to the wrist. Force ramps in various directions were produced by combinations of shoulder and elbow muscle activation, and the "best direction" for this biceps unit was straight up (red). The orange and yellow panels correspond to forces 18 and 36 degrees forward (top panels) or back (bottom panels) from the best direction.

(click for enlarged view)

Selected Publications:

Winges SA, Soechting JF, Flanders M. Multidigit control of contact forces during transport of handheld objects. J Neurophysiol. 2007 Aug;98(2):851-60.

Klein Breteler MD, Simura KJ, Flanders M. Timing of muscle activation in a hand movement sequence. Cereb Cortex. 2007 Apr;17(4):803-15. Epub 2006 May 12.

Mrotek LA, Flanders M, Soechting JF. Oculomotor responses to gradual changes in target direction. Exp Brain Res. 2006 Jun;172(2):175-92.

Flanders M, Mrotek LA, Gielen CC. Planning and drawing complex shapes. Exp Brain Res. 2006 May;171(1):116-28.

Mrotek LA, Gielen CC, Flanders M. Manual tracking in three dimensions. Exp Brain Res. 2006 May;171(1):99-115.

Soechting JF, Song W, Flanders M. Haptic feature extraction. Cereb Cortex. 2006 Aug;16(8):1168-80.

Flanders M. Functional somatotopy in sensorimotor cortex. Neuroreport. 2005 Mar 15;16(4):313-6. Review.

Henriques DY, Flanders M, Soechting JF. Distortions in the visual perception of shape. Exp Brain Res. 2005 Jan;160(3):384-93.

Soechting JF, Mrotek LA, Flanders M. Smooth pursuit tracking of an abrupt change in target direction: vector superposition of discrete responses. Exp Brain Res. 2005 Jan;160(2):245-58.

Former Graduate Students:

Uta Herrmann (Ph.D. 1998, Neuroscience, University of Minnesota).

Leigh Ann Mrotek (Neuroscience, University of Minnesota).