david lee
d.n.lee@ed.ac.uk

psychology
school of philosophy, psychology and language sciences
the university of edinburgh
edinburgh, uk

interests:
The aim is to discover fundamental principles underpinning the sensory guidance of purposeful movements in animals in general. In pursuit of this aim, my colleagues and I are developing and testing Tau theory, which basically argues that a central aspect of sensory guidance is controlling the closure of spatial and/or force gaps between effectors and their goals, and that this entails sensing and regulating the taus of gaps, i.e., the times-to-closure of gaps at their current closure-rates. Tau in movement guidance is currently being investigated in: sprinting, golf, catching and body balance; steering and braking when driving and flying; piano playing and drumming; movement dysfunction in Parkinson patients; echolocation-guided flight in bats; guidance of locomotion in protozoa and bacteria; control of heartrate; neural control of the muscles; information variables in the nervous system.