Sasha Zill

Our research is a labor of love that has as its context understanding how the nervous system generates motor behaviors. It can be argued that nervous systems evolved in animals to allow for sensible decisions to be made in generating and adapting motor actions. Sense organs provide the information needed for making these modifications The animals we have studied are arthropod invertebrates, and most work in the lab is done on sense organs of insects that detect mechanical forces (mechanoreceptors). Cogent reasons for studying insects are that their nervous systems have fewer neurons and their sense organs are individually identifiable. Experiments can be performed on these animals that are difficult or impossible to do in vertebrates. Our results are relevant to problems in motor control and Biorobotics. We have also studied these questions using engineering methods (Finite Element Analysis - see http://biorobots.cwru.edu/Projects/modeling/finiteelementmodeling.htm.)
However, the actual impetus for our studies is that insect behaviors are fascinating and richly complex. They are also constructed with an economy of design that reflects their remarkable adaptive success and longevity. Our research is further described on our webpages (see http://medix.marshall.edu/~zill/). The specific projects we are currently pursuing are described in Projects and our Publications are listed and some are available for download. We also have a number of Video sequences available for study or perusal, many of which have audio channels with recordings of sensory or motor activities during the behaviors. We have also posted a page related to Issues in Medical Education and teaching Basic Science/Neurobiology as a forum for ideas and discussion.