Reza Shadmehr, PhD

Research Interests

The Laboratory for Computational Motor Control members are engineers, physicists, and physicians, working together to understand the brain. We are intrigued by how the brain controls movements. In particular, how does it learn this control? When it learns a new task, how is the information represented? What parts of the brain are involved in storing the representation? With the passage of time, does the representation change? When there is damage to the brain, can it affect the ability to learn control? If so, can we aid in the process of recovery? We use tools from robotics, computational neuroscience, and functional imaging of the brain to discover the principles of motor control in humans.

Our approach stresses a close integration of viewpoints from robotics and control theory with neuroscience. We are driven to understand the nature of the biological computations that underlie the control of movements. We couple this effort with brain imaging studies and the study of motor disorders in patient populations in order to discover the functional anatomy of the control system and the cause of neurological motor disorders.

Titles

• Professor, Biomedical Engineering
• Professor, Neuroscience

Affiliated Centers & Institutes

• Institute for Basic Biomedical Science

Education

• Postdoctoral Fellowship, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1991–1994
• PhD, Computer Science, University of Southern California, 1991
• MS, Biomedical Engineering, University of Southern California, 1987
• BS, Electrical Engineering, Gonzaga University, 1985

Recent Highlights

December 11, 2018

The richer the reward, the faster you’ll likely move to reach it, study shows

If you are wondering how long you personally are willing to stand in line to buy that hot new holiday gift, scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine say the answer may be found in the biological rules governing how animals typically forage for food and other rewards.

• May 3, 2018
  Decoding the brain’s learning machine
  Uncovering the cerebellum’s “language” reveals workings of a biological learning machine
• March 20, 2017
  Six from Johns Hopkins BME elected to AIMBE College of Fellows
  Six members of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University have been elected to the College of Fellows at the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.
• September 10, 2015
  Study finds Parkinson’s symptom improvement with non-invasive brain stimulation
  Parkinson's disease patients are less willing to assign force to their affected arm. Now, researchers led by Reza Shadmehr, report that noninvasive cortical stimulation reduced effort costs in the affected arm, and improved motor symptoms.

Media