Profile of Keir Pearson, PhD
Professor
7-15A Medical Sciences Building
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta
Canada T6G 2H7
Tel: 780.492.5628
Keir Pearson's Website
Education
- PhD
Research
The general goal of my research is to establish the neuronal mechanisms responsible for generating the motor pattern for walking. Over the past decade my colleagues and I have concentrated on determining how feedback from sensory receptors in muscles is utilized in the production of stepping in the cat. We have also examined how motor patterns for walking are modified by alterations in the leg mechanics, and the mechanisms for functional recovery following injury to the nervous system. More recently I have become interested in how the memory of objects in the environment is represented in cortical systems, and how these representations are utilized to control stepping. This work has relevance to those developing procedures to assist the rehabilitation of patients with spinal cord injury, as well as to investigators designing walking robots.
Selected Publications
- Descending command systems for the initiation of locomotion in mammals.
- Role of sensory feedback in the control of stance duration in walking cats.
- Stepping of the forelegs over obstacles establishes long-lasting memories in cats.
- Long-lasting, context-dependent modification of stepping in the cat after repeated stumbling-corrective responses.
- Coordination of fore and hind leg stepping in cats on a transversely-split treadmill.
- Behavioral and electromyographic characterization of mice lacking EphA4 receptors.
- Long-lasting memories of obstacles guide leg movements in the walking cat.
- Recruitment of gastrocnemius muscles during the swing phase of stepping following partial denervation of knee flexor muscles in the cat.
- A role for hip position in initiating the swing-to-stance transition in walking cats.
- A new electrode configuration for recording electromyographic activity in behaving mice.
