Hamilton students Kim Lantz '03, Yuliya Zorkina '03, Rhea Lyon '03, and Nickesia Thomas '03 have spent a portion of their summer working with Professor of Psychology Jonathan Vaughan studying motor control.
Lantz and Zorkina worked primarily in the 2-dimensional field and their research gave birth to Lyon and Thomas's project, which concentrated on the more realistic 3-dimensional approach. Lantz and Zorkina have been studying provisional good posture and obstacle avoidance. To discover more about this, the duo wrote computer programs in Matlab that would generate postures to stimulate motion. The results of these trials were then compared to actual experimental data.
Both Lantz and Zorkina were approached by Vaughan and worked for him during the past year. Lantz had also worked during the previous summer. The two plan to continue their research in the upcoming year. Zorkina, a psychology and math major, advises those interested in summer research to start early because it affords the student more options and greater choice. Lyon and Thomas's research has been a continuation of Lantz and Zorkina's project, as the two expanded the idea of motor control into the 3-dimensional field. The two chose to do this because work done in the 3-dimensional plane is more realistic, less restrictive, and it is also beneficial to compare the data with the 2-dimensional research.
To study 3-dimensional motion, Lyon and Thomas created a computer program that when viewed with 3-D glasses showed dots that either came out or went into the screen. Test subjects were then asked to touch where they thought a target point was, avoiding all obstacles. Lyon and Thomas are hopeful that their research may someday be useful to those studying Parkinson's disease and cerebral palsy. Lyon, a neuroscience major, plans to continue doing research in graduate school and, possibly, in a future career. She advises students to find a project that is of particular interest to them because that makes the experience that much more rewarding.
