Jürgen Konczak, Kinesiology
"Body awareness in basal ganglia disease"
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     This talk will focus on the role of cerebro-basal ganglia loop for body awareness or kinaesthesia. The basal ganglia are a large subcortical structure believed to be involved in motor control and the attribution of reward. Diseases affecting the basal ganglia, such as Parkinson's disease, will lead to an impairment in motor function, while patients rarely complain about any perceptual deficits. However, recent findings indicate that these patients clearly show deficits in kinaesthetic perception and I will present data from my lab in support of this claim. The findings shed new light on the discussion about the role of perceptual information for action and about the role of the cerebro-basal in processes of sensorimotor integration.

Link to Sensorimotor Lab for background information:
http://cehd.umn.edu/kin/research/motorlab/Home.htm