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As much as science has uncovered about the human brain, the relationship between brain and movement remains relatively unclear. For example, when attempting to point to or touch a specific, moving target, response times vary based on a wide variety of factors. This  summer, Elin Lantz ’13 and Robert Hawkins ’13 along with Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Jonathan Vaughan will study how speed and accuracy of movement are different in the right and left hands.

Taylor Adams '11 and Deborah Barany '11 have been awarded National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships. Adams, a chemistry major, and Barany who is majoring in neuroscience, will both receive a three-year annual stipend of $30,000 and a $10,500 cost-of -education allowance for tuition and fees, and the freedom to conduct their own research at any accredited U.S. or foreign institution of graduate education they choose.

In 2009, Deborah A. Barany '11 and Anthony W. Sali '10 participated in Hamilton's Summer Science Research Program. Under the supervision of Psychology and Neuroscience professor Jonathan Vaughan, they investigated how people control movements in complex environments. A poster about the work was presented at the annual Psychonomic Society meeting in 2009.

Deborah Barany '11 and Anthony Sali '10 describe motor control in a way that would remind a listener of flip-book animation. An action consists of smaller, partial movements, that when assembled together and in the right fashion, trigger the complete maneuver. Similarly, flip books rely on persistence of vision to create the illusion of fluid motion, when in reality, they are just discontinuous images stapled together.