Richard Schmidt - US grants

This research will examine patterns of coordinations between the arms as people engage in simple (e.g., two arms moving at one tempo) and complex (e.g., juggling) rhythmic activities. Its objective is twofold, (1) to identify the dynamical principles by which rhythmic coordinations between the limbs can be both stable and adaptive and (2) to understand how these principles affect how the person controls, perceives new aspects of, and learns these coordinations. Some experiments will manipulate the phase relation between limbs, the frequencies at which they move together, and the frequencies at which they move alone. Others will involve skilled juggling under conditions which manipulate variables of the juggled objects and the juggling pattern. The data will be collected using three-dimensional motion analyzers and addressed using the theory and methods of nonlinear dynamics. The results should provide useful constraints on modeling coordination and contribute to the understanding of rhythmic movement disorders.

9301829 Goodman This research project will develop a three-dimensional mathematical model to analyze the structural performance of a typical manufactured house subjected to extreme winds and other lateral loads. The math model will be verified by a full scale experiment of a generic manufactured house.

Cognitive dysfunction, including loss of short-term memory, decreased concentration and poor learning, is one of the most common disabilities resulting from traumatic brain injury (TBI). Even mild concussion can result in impairments taking weeks or months to clear. The neuronal basis for these stereotyped deficits is not firmly established, however, recent evidence suggests a possible vulnerability of septal and ventrobasal forebrain cholinergic neurons. My preliminary studies found a 35-40% decrease in these neurons 2 weeks following experimental TBI. This proposal is directed at investigating in detail how forebrain cholinergic innervation is affected by experimental TBI. The main hypothesis to be tested is that concussive injury induces degeneration and dysfunction in these neurons, an that regenerative sprouting or neuronal plasticity eventually leads to at least partial restoration of this innervation. This cycle of degeneration and regeneration is hypothesized to account, at least in part, for the cognitive changes following TBI. We would also anticipate that age-related differences in the vulnerability of these cholinergic neurons account for the greater impairment and more limited recovery seen in aged individuals. Lastly, we would expect that treatments which protect these neurons from initial injury would result in less cognitive impairment after concussion. The experiments will all be conducted using the fluid percussion model of TBI in rats. Both immunohistochemical and quantitative neurochemical techniques will be used to analyze cholinergic innervation. We will also simultaneously analyze the effect of TBI on forebrain catecholaminergic innervation as a control for the selectivity of cholinergic injury. Cognitive impairment will be assessed using the Morris water maze test. This study represents a novel approach to the problem of TBI. The investigation of how individual neuronal systems are affected by TBI should greatly increase our understanding of this complex problem and enable therapies directed at improving outcome.

The University of Wyoming and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) have previously collaborated to research the durability of manufactured homes. This research involved subjecting a single-wide manufactured home to simulated design lateral loads, analyzing structural response and modeling. This project also builds on prior work sponsored by NSF, HUD, and the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI). The project seeks to better understand structural response and to predict behavior under loads from hazardous winds, the key to providing homeowners higher quality, safety, and cost-effectiveness. The previously tested (design lateral load), single-wide manufactured home is installed in a remote, high-wind area and a meteorological tower provided. Programmed task for this project include: 1) Completion and testing of the data acquisition system, 2) Data collection and analysis during high wind events, #) Wind force studies and wind tunnel testing, 4) Structural analysis and modeling, and 5) Reporting and technology transfer. The results of this research can lead to significant savings in annual losses of life and property by providing validated information for the development of cost-effective building technologies that optimize wind resistance and maintain home affordability

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) exhibit numerous impairments in social interaction that typically persist throughout adolescence and adulthood. These deficits severely impede mental and physical development, learning, and behavioral functioning at home and in the community and also make successful treatment difficult. Past research has found that the lack of social competence of children with ASD is comprised of deficits in a number of componential areas including social cognitive and social perceptual processes. Although interacting competently with others relies on cognitive abilities such as making inferences about another's mental state, a less obvious component of social competence lies within social motor processes, the interpersonal coordination of movements during a social interaction. Indeed social psychological research has found that social motor coordination both in the form of imitation and in the lesser known phenomenon of interactional synchrony, is important for maintaining critical aspects of successful human social interaction, including interpersonal responsiveness, social rapport and other-directedness, positive self-other relations, and verbal communication and comprehension. Given the importance of social competence in ASD, the proposed research will evaluate whether social motor coordination can be a marker for social competence in autism across the spectrum of deficits and explore the relationship between motorically-based and cognitively-based conceptions of social competence. Given that social interactions are inherently complex and unfold over time, we propose to evaluate not only traditional cognitive measures of social competence but also the dynamical structure of social coordination across the ASD spectrum by using unique, process-oriented measures of social coordination and analyzing the time series records of the time-dependent unfolding of social coordination during social interaction tasks. We investigate a broad range of questions concerning the social deficits in ASD by using a multi-method design and examining the relationships among measures that capture varied and complex aspects of social interactions. Additionally, we will confront the heterogeneity within the population of children with ASD by including children with a range of language and cognitive abilities in order to get a better sense of how deficits in motor coordination may be influenced by these variables that vary widely within the ASD population. If successful, the research proposed here has important implications for understanding more about the etiology of the social deficits in ASD and will provide a fertile ground for exploring potential new avenues for intervention. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The numerous impairments in social interaction that affect Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can severely impede mental and physical development, learning, and behavioral functioning at home and in the community and also make successful treatment difficult. Accordingly, having a better understanding of the etiology of the social deficits in ASD represents a pressing public health need. We are exploring the role of an overlooked dimension of social interaction, social motor coordination, in ASD. We propose that social motor coordination is a marker for social competence in autism across the spectrum of deficits, will likely provide a fertile new ground for exploring potential avenues for intervention and may provide a pathway for improving social skills in children with ASD.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A fundamental feature of social behavior is the face-to-face or co-present interactions that characterize everyday social activity. The success of such interactions, whether measured in terms of social connection, goal achievement, or the ability of an individual or group of individuals to understand and predict the meaningful intentions and behaviors of others, is not only dependent on the processes of social cognition and perception, but also on the between-person motor coordination that makes such face-to-face and co-present interactions possible. Understanding and modeling the dynamics of social motor coordination, including how it emerges and is maintained over time, as well as how its stable states are activated, dissolved, transformed, and exchanged over time, is therefore an extremely important endeavor. The overall aim of the proposed project is to develop a dynamical modeling strategy for capturing the self-organized behavioral dynamics of goal-directed physical activity among socially coordinated human agents and how the dynamics of such tasks are influenced by physical, information, and task-goal properties. More specifically, the proposed project will build differential equation models of the temporal and spatial patterns that dynamically emerge during a number of different movement based multi-agent action tasks: social rhythmic or repetitive movement and targeting tasks, social object-moving tasks, structured conversation tasks, and a competitive sport task. Employing a systems identification approach to formulate candidate behavioral dynamics models, we will not only capture the steady-state dynamics of the joint and social behaviors investigated, but will also formulate models that capture how parameter tuning and symmetry breaking events fundamentally modify the dynamics of social interaction, including movement sub-roles (e.g., leader-follower) and action sequencing. By recording the limb or whole body movements of participants during the real-world performance of social action tasks, we will evaluate and refine the proposed models using a range of parameter estimation techniques. For some of the social action tasks, we will also test and refine the developed models by implementing them into real-time human-computer interfaces and investigate whether the behavior of real participants is modulated in a qualitatively similarly manner when interacting with model-controlled versus other-participant-controlled task stimuli. By developing a detailed strategy for modeling the dynamics of social action tasks, the proposed project will have a transformative impact on the fields which study social coordination such as cognitive science, social and clinical psychology and robotics by providing researchers with empirical modeling strategies for better apprehending the self-organizing dynamics of goal-directed social activity.