Lorenz Assländer

In 1916 the BMJ published an article about the work done by James Shearer, an American physician working in the British Army as a sergeant (because he had no British qualification). He had described a "delineator" which was better than x rays for portraying gunshot wounds. This caused a sensation and a lot of interest — but on investigation the work was found to have been invented. The BMJ published a retraction, but Shearer was tried by court martial and sentenced to death by firing squad.

Next time an institution tells you how seriously it takes research misconduct, ask them if it's *this* seriously. www.bmj.com/content/297/...

Jane Goodall offers sage advice for the rest of us. #3E

Please repost!

We have an open rank, tenure-line faculty position in biomechanics in the School of Kinesiology at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. At U-M we have great colleagues, exceptional resources, and biomechanics can be found all across the campus. #BiomechSky

Fully agree! Visual, vestibular and also proprioceptive sensory systems all have prominent velocity signals.

🧠📈 #neuroskyence

Is It Me or the Train Moving? Humans Resolve Sensory Conflicts with a Nonlinear Feedback Mechanism in Balance Control Humans use multiple sensory systems to estimate body orientation in space. Sensory contributions change depending on context. A predominant concept for the underlying multisensory integration (MSI) is...

Paper was recently featured in J Neuroscience; author copy through OSF.
www.jneurosci.org/content/45/2...
osf.io/emskv/

With sky-less Matthias Albrecht, Markus Gruber, and Robert Peterka. Supported by AFF @uni-konstanz.de

Our data is from sway behavior during standing balance. We believe the mechanism is generally relevant for the internal reconstruction of body orientation and #selfmotion for #motorcontrol, #perception, and #navigation.

In a linear system, visual scene motion evokes body sway at just those frequencies contained in the scene motion. We predicted a distortion using simulations, where body sway is evoked at frequencies NOT contained in the scene motion. This non-intuitive prediction was confirmed in experiments.

This reflects a reduced reliance on vision, quantitatively reproduced by the RFM mechanism.
Furthermore, the RFM model - once tuned - also predicts sway in new sequences (Prediction).

A typical behavior is that subjects sway increases less than proportional when increasing the movement amplitude of the visual reference: the 'gain' (amplitude ratio between body sway and stimulus) is reduced with increasing stimulus amplitude (Model fit left-to-right).

We implemented this mechanism in a closed-loop balance control model and compared its behavior with the sway responses of 24 subjects viewing a moving visual screen in a virtual reality head-mounted display.

The magic comes in, when assuming that the RFM reconstruction is blocked at small velocities and corrects (= is added to) the visual self-motion signal when exceeding a certain velocity threshold.
Why magic? It explains human behavior related to context dependent changes in sensory contributions.

In our new paper, we present evidence that the CNS continuously estimates the movement of the visual reference by comparing visual to other sensory cues. This reconstruction of Reference Frame Motion (RFM) happens in velocity. Why?

The underlying question is a fundamental problem in neuroscience: how does the nervous system construct body orientation from multiple, potentially conflicting sensory inputs?
We might have a solution.

Is it me, or the train moving?
We use vision to maintain balance. Just close your eyes while standing on one leg and you typically feel less stable. But if we use vision, how come we do not fall when looking at a moving visual reference, e.g. a train?
📈🧠🧪
#sensorimotor #balance #BiomechSky

A new blog, written together with @academic-integrity.bsky.social

Interesting paper, thread and discussion!

Germany has this DEAL consortium, which currently is focused on promoting Open Access. Would be cool to push this towards non-profit journals only.

deal-konsortium.de/en/

Newton's Laws of Graduation, Part 1

Brain Surfaces of 70 primate species

1
To predict the behaviour of a primate, would you rather base your guess on a closely related species or one with a similar brain shape? We looked at brains & behaviours of 70 species, you’ll be surprised!

🧵Thread on our new preprint with @r3rt0.bsky.social , doi.org/10.1101/2025...

New job vacancy!

Joint PhD: Prevent Falls with Augmented Reality (FallAR) at Maastricht & Hasselt Universities
vacancies.maastrichtuniversity.nl/job/Maastric...
with me, @melvynroerdink.bsky.social Pieter Meyns & @kennethmeijer.bsky.social

@ispgr.bsky.social @worldfallssociety.bsky.social

Looking for a PhD-student position? Eager to work with advanced rehabtech and scalable augmented-reality solutions for fall-risk assessment and treatment? Learn from a team of scientists, Strolll entrepreneurs & developers and clinicians? Love interacting with older adults in NL & BE? Please apply!

Which Kind of Science Reform What hope is there for science reform, if we can't agree on what to reform? Right now, principles are more important than practices.

How can we reform science? I have some ideas. But I am not sure you’ll like them, because they don’t promise much. elevanth.org/blog/2025/07...

📢 New Publication 📢

Effort differentially shapes behavior before, during & after an action. w/ @bcheval.bsky.social, Silvio & Florent, we explore stage-specific effects of physical effort & how these dynamically modulate each other.

Now out in Trends in Cognitive Sciences 🤩🤩

Curious? ⬇️

I wrote an article earlier in the week arguing that we need to give junior researchers more independence earlier, and this should be our focus, not moonshot mega projects led by senior researchers.

I was surprised how much agreement I'm seeing.

So next question: how do we do this?

Is it me or the train moving? Humans resolve sensory conflicts with a nonlinear feedback mechanism in balance control Humans use multiple sensory systems to estimate body orientation in space. Sensory contributions change depending on context. A predominant concept for the underlying multisensory integration (MSI) is...

Self-promotion:
This is something we attempted for sensory integration in balance control. 1) quantitative model of how we think it works (based on previous work), 2) derived strong and unintuitive predictions, 3) conducted experiments to confirm.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Does this count?

Jep, I fully agree. We did that in the last round and he/she was not happy.
Problem is: I see the confirmation of a true and strong a priori prediction as very good evidence and he/she wants us to exclude all alternative explanations, which is simply impossible. Pretty fundamental disagreement 🤷‍♂️

Is it me or the train moving? Humans resolve sensory conflicts with a nonlinear feedback mechanism in balance control Humans use multiple sensory systems to estimate body orientation in space. A predominant concept for the underlying multisensory integration (MSI) is the linear summation of weighted inputs from indiv...

Here is the preprint - will post more on it once its out.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

If you derive a non-intuitive prediction of a nonlinear distortion, test and confirm it, do you have to test for other potential explanations within this publication?

My point is: we can never fully exclude other potential explanations. A strong, testable prediction is the best we can do. No?

Science question: we believe we have identified a mechanism for sensory integration in balance. We predicted distortions, tested and confirmed them.

Reviewer: "..it is difficult to accept that these distortions provide additional support to the proposed model given there may be other sources." 🧪🧠📈

Spread the word and consider registering!

The app is easy to use, you can manipulate the visual sensory input and measure body sway.

Main feature: a full control systems analysis routine including experimental assessment and model-based interpretation to output sensory weights and other parameters