Thomas Korff

It is my goal to understand how children acquire the ability to produce coordinated movement. It is of particular interest how children use muscular forces in order to produce purposeful movement because we can make inferences about how the nervous system is trying to accomplish the goal of the task.

In particular, I am investigating how muscular forces are applied during pedaling. Since it is difficult to measure muscular forces directly, we use principles of physics to indirectly calculate these forces. In the Developmental Motor Control Laboratory, we have the ability to use special video cameras to film the cycling movement.

We also use special pedals that can measure how hard the child pushes down (vertical force) and pushes forward or pulls backward (horizontal force).

The information obtained from filming the cycling movement and recording the forces applied to the pedal is transferred into a computer simulation, which then lets us determine how muscle forces produce the cyclical movement.