Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

In our dailyinteractions with our environment there are rules that dictate the relationship between perception and action, requiring cognitive-motor integration (CMI). This environmental interaction also involves dynamic postural control, where one must maintain balance while performing activities. Here we explore the impact of age, gender, hormone levels, and skilled performance experience on brain activity during the control of simple and whole-body multi-domain integration tasks, with emphasis on recruiting women pre-, peri- and post-menopause. Participants (aged 30 and 65) will be engaged in an AR (Magic Leap, Inc.) whole-body task with increasing complexity. Participants will walk naturally while moving virtual objects with direct hand-to-object interaction. Subsequent levels will introduce vestibular and cognitive challenges. Single-domain tasks will be done in order to perform contrasts on brainwave activity collected using a functional Near InfraRed Spectroscopy (fNIRS) covering the frontal and parietal regions (Artinis, Inc). Kinematic measures include head and handheld controller position (pitch/roll/yaw, X-Y-Z, 60Hz sampling rate). Analysis of head pose and hand path length and path variability and its relationship to brain activity as a function of group will be done using standard univariate methods (ANOVA, correlations with hormone levels, etc). In our study we will identify for the first time how hormone-level influences on brain networks are involved in the control of both simple and multi-domain movements. This knowledge will translate to the industrial, biomedical engineering, and professional sport training and coaching sectors and advance our understanding of how gender-related factors affect how we interact with objects in the world around us.