Tamar R. Makin

This study shows that indirect tactile signals from a robotic thumb can be discriminated and used to spatially localise touch, even without direct haptic feedback.

This study compares muscle-based EMG and movement-based force sensor control of a robotic third thumb, finding force control performs better but EMG offers better generalisation.

This study shows that cortical representations of hand and lips remain stable before and after arm amputation, contradicting previous claims of large-scale reorganization.

This study shows that motor learning with an extra robotic limb can generalize across tasks, body postures, and control assignments, suggesting abstract motor representations, but users still prefer biological hands.

This study shows that wearable robotic devices provide natural sensory feedback that is quickly integrated into the body's representation and becomes more embodied with long-term use.

This study investigates neuroplasticity in children and adults with congenital limb differences, showing early global remapping in the somatosensory cortex driven by deprivation and compensatory behavior.

The paper investigates whether brain remapping after hand loss affects motor control of the intact hand, finding increased neural activity in amputees but no behavioral improvement.

This study shows that primary somatosensory cortex digit representation is consistent between active and passive tasks, with active tasks better at fine-grained discrimination.

This study compares biomimetic and arbitrary control strategies for bionic hand training, finding that both improve control and embodiment, with biomimetic offering early advantages and arbitrary showing better generalization.

This study investigates facial somatotopy in S1 and remapping after hand loss, finding an upright facial organization and restricted remapping in congenital one-handers.

This study examines cortical hand map changes after finger nerve block, finding persistent representation despite input loss, suggesting distributed processing and homeostatic mechanisms.

The paper shows that body part and action information is distributed across the somatosensory homunculus beyond primary areas, revealing new organizational principles in S1.

This study compares motor control of artificial arms between congenital one-handers and amputees, finding that early experience with an artificial arm improves motor control.

The paper compares cognitive strategies in individuals with and without congenital limb differences in a virtual problem-solving task, finding differences in thinking time and persistence despite equal motor capabilities.

This study shows that intrinsic somatosensory signals from body parts controlling a robotic device support motor learning and performance, even when artificial feedback is absent.

This study examines how motor augmentation with a robotic thumb affects brain representation of the biological hand, finding that training leads to changes in motor control, embodiment, and neural decoding of the augmented hand.

The paper investigates finger representation in the primary somatosensory cortex of congenitally blind individuals using fMRI and psychophysics, finding no increased hand representation but activation of the middle temporal complex during finger movement.

The paper shows that remapping in cerebral and cerebellar cortices after hand loss is not restricted by somatotopy, as multiple non-neighboring body parts are represented in the deprived hand region.

The paper shows that whole-brain functional connectivity patterns remain consistent across different task states, despite changes in brain activation.

This paper introduces the Additive Signal Change (ASC) method to improve the specificity of functional connectivity analysis by disambiguating signal changes underlying neural activity correlations.