PhD Defense of Alexander Vyazmin Held at the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience

On June 22, Alexander Vyazmin successfully defended his PhD dissertation on grasping and transporting objects with the hand. The study examines how the requirement to rotate an object affects different phases of the movement even before contact with the object is made.

When we reach for a cup of coffee or move a book on a shelf, it seems as though the hand acts on its own. In reality, these movements are preceded by complex preparation and motor planning — a process in which the nervous system anticipates the parameters of the upcoming action even before the movement begins, preparing the trajectory, hand configuration, and grip force.

Traditional methods for studying this process (such as reaction time measurements, EEG, or fMRI) provide only a fragmented picture and make it difficult to distinguish between planning and execution. Alexander Vyazmin’s dissertation explores how increasing the complexity of a grasping task affects hand movement preparation. To precisely manipulate cognitive and motor demands, the author introduced a mandatory object rotation into the classic grasping task for the first time. He also developed specialized software, Kinematic 4, to analyze the collected data. A series of experiments demonstrates how object rotation affects hand preparation time, finger opening speed, and wrist trajectory, and why symmetric rotations are performed more easily than asymmetric ones.

— Alexander, why did you choose this particular topic?

Hand movement has always been one of the most complex and fascinating areas for me. Motor planning is still relatively understudied in this field, and it is interesting from both psychophysiological and neurobiological perspectives. The presence of a high-precision motion capture system in the Institute of Cognitive Neurosciences laboratory also helped confirm my choice.

— Why did you use abstract geometric shapes in the experiments instead of everyday objects?

We did this deliberately to eliminate the influence of semantic and cognitive load that familiar household objects carry.

— What are your plans going forward?

I want to develop this project into a commercial product for the clinical diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases. I hope the results of this work will bring real benefits to people.

The dissertation titled “Development and Kinematic Analysis of a 3D Object Grasping Task: A Study of Motor Planning and Hand Movement Execution” was defended in the specialty 5.12.1 “Interdisciplinary Research of Cognitive Processes.” The scientific supervisor was Matteo Feurra, PhD.

The full text is available on the dissertation council’s website: https://www.hse.ru/sci/diss/1133222295