Dr. Brian Corneil

Dr. Corneil's research focuses on the neural control of movement, with a specific focus on orienting eye-head gaze shifts and visually-guided limb movements. The systems generating such movements solve effortlessly many of the problems that have bedeviled sensori-motor control, such as the selection of coordination patterns amongst an infinite number of solutions, flexible modulation of such patterns with both bottom-up and top-down signals, feedback via efference copy, temporary suppression of otherwise counter-productive reflexes, and the encoding of initial body configuration. His lab employs complementary neurophysiological approaches in both human and non-human primates, and has leveraged recent insights into explorations of pupil control, the neural basis of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and improved assessments of vestibulospinal reflexes and movement inhibition in humans. He currently directs the inter-disciplinary Neuroscience Graduate Program at Western.