Amanda Therrien, PhD, is featured in the latest episode of the People Behind the Science Podcast published this week. Dr. Therrien is an Institute Scientist and Director of the Sensorimotor Learning Laboratory at MRRI.

In her interview, Dr. Therrien talks about some of her favorite pastimes, including running, knitting, gardening, and cooking. She walks listeners through her career path and shares what it has been like launching her new research laboratory over the past year.

The interview also covers some of Amanda’s new and ongoing research projects. In one of her research lines, Dr. Therrien is working to optimize therapeutic interventions for ataxia, a disorder caused by damage to the cerebellum that results in impaired movement coordination. The goal of these interventions is to teach people with ataxia how to achieve movement outcomes (e.g. reaching to a target in a coordinated way) by leveraging a training mechanism that is less dependent on the cerebellum. Dr. Therrien also describes a new collaborative research study that will elucidate the sensorimotor processing involved in dynamic proprioception. Dynamic proprioception refers to our sense of where our limbs are in space while they are moving, and it is important for motor learning.

Listen to the full interview on peoplebehindthescience.com.