Dr. Jason Friedman

Dr. Jason Friedman is a Senior lecturer in the Physical Therapy Dept. and the Sagol School of Neuroscience. He has a multidisciplinary background – an M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Weizmann Institute, and postdoctoral research in kinesiology at Penn State University and cognitive sciences at Macquarie University. He combines his computational background with practical experience in studying movements to perform research on human motor control and motor learning.

Dr. Friedman studies and models how we produce movements, and how we learn to make new movements. In particular, he is interested in ways to speed up motor learning in different populations, including typically developing children and adults, as well as people with motor disorders such as (stroke, cerebral palsy and Parkinson’s disease). His approach examines what are the building blocks of movements (movement primitives), how these building blocks are combined to produce skillful movement, how they change as we learn new movements, and how movement coordination and generation changes as we age. He plans to use this understanding to enhance motor learning.