Nicole Wenderoth
Curriculum Vitae
Nicole Wenderoth has been a Professor for Neural Control of Movement in the Department of Health Sciences and Technology, since 2012. She was born in Essen, Germany, in 1970. She earned a Master degree (Diplom) in Kinesiology, at the German Sport University in Cologne, Germany, in 1996. In the same year she got an Intermediate Diploma (Vordiplom) in Computer Science, from FernUniversität Hagen, Germany. She continued her studies in Kinesiology at the German Sport University to get a PhD in 2000. From 2001 to 2006, she was a Postdoc at the Centre for Movement Control and Neuroplasticity of KU Leuven, Belgium. In 2006 she became an Assistant and later Associate Professor (with a specific research assignment at the Centre for Movement Control and Neuroplasticity, in the Faculty of Movement and Rehabilitation Sciences of the above university.
Research Interests
After her PhD she investigated three major question: First, she was interested how the left and the right hemisphere of the human brain communicate with each other when both hands need to be moved at the same time. It is well known that some bimanual movements are easy, like clapping the hands, while others are difficult, like patting the head while rubbing the stomach. They could show that neural control differs fundamentally between these situations revealing how the brain computes a common movement plan for the two hands. Second, they showed that observing a movement made by others is sufficient to activate the motor cortex of the observer which encodes important parameters like the associated muscle activity. This is an important mechanism which allows to intuitively understand actions made by others. Interestingly this ability is impaired in volunteers how lost either vision or hearing from birth on and in individuals suffering from Autism. Finally, they investigated how motor learning and skill acquisition can be enhanced, e.g. by additional movement observation or by non-invaisve brain stimulation methods.
Publications
For a full list of publications please consult external page Google Scholar.
Professur Neuronale Bewegungskontr
Gloriastrasse 37/ 39
8092
Zürich
Switzerland