Hendrik Reimann

Research Interests

The upright human body is mechanically unstable. Parts of our brains are constantly working to stabilize it by regulating muscle activity based on sensory information. During walking, this process is complicated by the gait cycle, since activating a leg muscle has very different effects when the leg is in swing vs. when it is on the ground. We use sensory perturbations on people walking in a Virtual Reality environment to study how this sensorimotor control loop functions and how it changes with aging and neuromotor disease. Based on these experimental data, we build computational models that allow us to understand the role that different factors like reduced muscle strength or slower walking speed play in loss of balance and falls.

Education

• Diploma, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany, Mathematics (~M.S.)
• Ph.D., Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany, Theoretical Neuroscience
• Postdoctoral Fellow, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA, Kinesiology
• Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA, Kinesiology and Applied Physiology

Courses

• BMSC 867: Introduction to Programming in Matlab

• BMSC/KAAP 667: Biomedical Signal Processing

Current Funding

An experimental-computational approach to the integration of subtasks with a spinal reflex model of locomotion (NSF CRCNS 1822568).
PI’s: John Jeka (USA) and Gregor Schöner (Germany). 

Role: Researcher