John Krakauer

John Krakauer is currently John C. Malone Professor, Professor of Neurology, Neuroscience, and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and Director of the Brain, Learning, Animation, and Movement Lab (www.BLAM-lab.org) at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His areas of research interest are: 

• Experimental and computational studies of motor control and motor learning in humans.
• Tracking long-term motor skill learning and its relation to higher cognitive processes such as decision-making.
• Prediction of motor recovery after stroke.
• Mechanisms of spontaneous motor recovery after stroke in humans and in mouse models.
• New neuro-rehabilitation approaches for patients in the first 3 months after stroke.
• Philosophy of Mind. 

 

Dr. Krakauer also holds a Visiting Scientist position at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Lisbon, and is co-founder of the company MSquare Health and of the creative engineering Hopkins-based project named KATA. KATA and MSquare are both predicated on the idea that animal movement based on real physics is highly pleasurable and that this pleasure is hugely heightened when the animal movement is under the control of our own movements. A simulated dolphin and other cetaceans developed by KATA has led to a therapeutic game that has been interfaced with an exoskeletal robot in a multi-site rehabilitation trial for early stroke recovery, and with motion tracking for cognitive therapy in the normal aged. Dr. Krakauer was profiled in the New Yorker in 2015 and his book, “Broken Movement: The Neurobiology of Motor Recovery after Stroke” was published by the MIT Press in the November 2017.

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Topics of Interest: Behavior - Health - Neuroscience - Psychology - Technology/Innovation

Other Affiliations and Institutions: Zuckerman Institute, Columbia University, New York NY The Champalimaud Center for the Unknown, Lisbon, Portugal

How SFI changes your mind: All the time but towards a point of convergence.

When and how you first got involved with SFI: Visited way back in early 2000s when my brother, David, first joined the faculty. Have been visiting ever since.

Favorite Book: 2666

Favorite Film: Moonlight