Dr. Thomas Eggert

Primary research focus:Behavioral & Cognitive Neuroscience

Second research focus: Theoretical Neuroscience & Technical Applications

Keywords: motor control, eye movements, hand movements

Brief research description:
I work on sensorimotor research in movement control by means of behavioral research methods. Eye and hand movements are measured under online controlled stimulus conditions that allow to modify the sensorimotor feedback loop. The main goal of this research is to identify the strategies of human motor control in reaction to random and systematic errors. These strategies include not only various loops operating on efference copies, proprioceptive and visual feedback but also active exploration. Most importantly, biological motor control is not determined by the history of external stimuli but reflects the stochastic nature of internal memory states which change with adaptation and motor learning. Hence, motor control is not limited to the control of mean movement trajectories but involves also the active control of (trial-to-trial) motor variability. The analysis of motor variability and the identification of its various sources is therefore an essential aspect of my research.

Selected publications:

Eggert T, Straube A (2019) Chapter 10 - Saccade variability in healthy subjects and cerebellar patients. In: Ramat S, Shaikh AG (eds) Progress in Brain Research. Elsevier, pp 141-152, doi: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2019.03.021

Eggert T, Robinson FR, Straube A (2016) Modeling Inter-trial Variability of Saccade Trajectories: Effects of Lesions of the Oculomotor Part of the Fastigial Nucleus. PLoS Comput Biol 12:e1004866 doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004866

Eggert T, Drever J, Straube A (2014) Interference-free acquisition of overlapping sequences in explicit spatial memory. Behavioural brain research 262:21–30, doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2013.12.047

Krüger M, Borbely B, Eggert T, Straube A (2012) Synergistic control of joint angle variability: influence of target shape. Hum Mov Sci 31:1071-1089 doi: 10.1016/j.humov.2011.12.002

Brostek L, Eggert T, Ono S, Mustari MJ, Büttner U, Glasauer S (2011) An information-theoretic approach for evaluating probabilistic tuning functions of single neurons. Front Comput Neurosci 5:15 doi: 10.3389/fncom.2011.00015