The puppet master: How the brain controls the body

Francis Crick Prize Lecture

The effortless ease with which humans moveour arms, our eyes, even our lips when we speakmasks the true complexity of the control processes involved. This is evident when we try to build machines to perform human control tasks. While computers can now beat grandmasters at chess, no computer can yet control a robot to manipulate a chess piece with the dexterity of a six-year-old child. A major factor that makes control hard is the uncertainty inherent in the world and in our own sensory and motor systems. Professor Daniel Wolpert of the University of Cambridge will explain how the brain deals with this and demonstrate that a key feature of skilled human motor performance is the ability of the brain to perform optimally in the presence of uncertainty.

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