Entry Date:
April 27, 2010

Controlling Actions

Principal Investigator Emilio Bizzi


The fundamental job of the brain is to produce actions. Emilio Bizzi examines how the brain translates our general intentions into the detailed commands needed to control muscle movements. One of his key discoveries is that groups of muscles are activated synergistically by circuits of neurons in the spinal cord. He believes that these synergies represent the fundamental building blocks for assembling a repertoire of complex movements.