Lab News
Jürgen Konczak, Director of the HSC Laboratory, gave a presentation on the neural control of handwriting at the joint 2026 annual meeting of the Association of Forensic Document Examiners and The National Association of Document Examiners. These experts routinely examine handwriting and signatures to determine whether they have been forged. Konczak presented an overview on the neural regions involved in the control of handwriting and how lesions or neurological disease can alter highly learnt patterns of human handwriting.
Jürgen Konczak, Director of the Human Sensorimotor Control Laboratory, gave a presentation to the International Congress of Clinical Neurophysiology 2026 in Cartagena, Columbia. As part of a symposium that focused on dystonia as a network disease, Konczak spoke on how we get from identifying biomarkers to targeted therapies for focal dystonia. Specifically, he presented the lab's research on using vibro-tactile stimulation as a non-invasive neuromodulation treatment for focal dystonia.
Jürgen Konczak, Director HSCL, published a study with colleagues in otolaryngology in the specialty journal Laryngoscope on acoustic markers associated with the voice disorder laryngeal dystonia. This form of focal dystonia is a chronic voice disorder without a cure and regular injections of Botulinum toxin is the major available treatment. This study examined whether several acoustic markers of voice can be good candidates to determine changes in voice quality due to Botulinum toxin treatment. The open access study found that these markers correlate with certain speech symptoms, but are not meaningful predictors of a treatment response. The lead author of the study is Dr. Jesse Hoffmeister from the UM Department of Otolaryngology.
Jürgen Konczak, Director of HSCL, is coauthor of a new publication in the journal Brain Sciences. The publication entitled Effects of Temporal Expectancy on Motor Control and Cognitive Processes Supporting Speech Production results from a collaboration with the lab of Dr. Jayanthi Sasisekaran from the Department in Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences. Using electroencephalography, the study investigated the responses of brain regions involved in speech production. The goal was to understand how cognitive processes affected speech production. The results show that temporal predictability primes speech motor planning and enables faster speech, extra cognitive demands delayed speech onset in healthy adult speakers.
Jürgen Konczak, Director of the HSC Lab, gave a series of online eight lectures at the University of Genoa to graduate students in the Fisioterapia Neurologica (neurological physical therapy) program. The lectures covered the basic neurophysiology of proprioception and its role for the control of movement as well as examples of neurological movement disorders associated with proprioceptive dysfunction.