Katherine Perks

Katherine Perks is a neuroscience graduate student in the Orsborn Lab at the University of Washington. Her work focuses on understanding how the brain learns new internal models or adapts existing models for effective sensorimotor control. She is currently implementing the tracking task described above in a brain-computer interface (BCI) paradigm to quantify internal models at the neural level. Perks received her bachelor’s degree. in neuroscience from the University of Texas at Austin, where she studied the molecular basis of motor disorders and potential cures using C. elegans. She also performed postbaccalaureate research at Baylor College of Medicine as an NIH PREP fellow.

Principal Investigator: Amy Orsborn

Fellow: Penelope Lilley

Undergraduate Fellow Project:

Our movements are controlled by a combination of predictive feedforward control and reactive feedback control. It is thought that people exert feedforward control by learning internal models of how objects or devices will respond when interacted with. For example, you likely have an internal model of how moving a computer mouse affects the cursor you see on the screen. This project asks how internal models are learned and how, once learned, they impact behavior. We explore these questions by studying non-human primates as they interact with a touchscreen tablet and learn to follow a moving target on the screen. This novel in-cage tracking task is designed to simultaneously separate feedforward and feedback control components during motor behavior so that we can study the formation of internal models. As part of our team, the SURFiN fellow will assist with designing and running in-cage experiments. They will also analyze the behavioral data collected and use control theory methods to quantify internal models (i.e., feedforward control). This project will provide training in both experimental and computational approaches in systems neuroscience, and novel ways to study learning.