Research
Human Performance Laboratories
Faculty, staff, and students are carrying out a broad range of research in the School of HPER's Human Performance Laboratories.
Biochemistry Lab: Research in the exercise biochemistry laboratory is directed toward examining the inflammatory mediators responsible for airway inflammation in asthmatic subjects during exercise and examining oxidative stress and antioxidants during exercise.
Biomechanics Lab: The primary objective of the Biomechanics Laboratory is to gain a better understanding of the cause-effect mechanisms of sports motions, mainly through film analysis. Athletes are filmed in the course of their sport activities.
Clinical Exercise Physiology Lab: The goal of the clinical research in this lab is to establish the most effective exercise prescription in health and disease. The current diseases of interest include hypertension, diabetes, and obesity. The measurement of endothelial function is a new direction for the laboratory.
Counsilman Center: Named after legendary swim coach and educator James E. "Doc" Counsilman, the center honors his seminal work in developing the science of swimming. The Counsilman Center seeks to establish fellowships for students who wish to study the science of coaching; continue Doc's pursuit of coaching innovations by exploring the use of new video and electronic technology to assess the performance of competitive swimmers; serve as a resource for coaches, swimmers, and scholars on the history of swimming, training techniques, and competition; provide a source for independent perspectives on training techniques and swimming-related equipment; and act as a testing facility for the physiologic, psychological, and biomechanical status of athletes.
Exercise Physiology Labs: Research in the Exercise Physiology Laboratories is related to a variety of topics, including sports nutrition, diet and airway function, respiratory muscle function in health and disease, ventilatory strategies during exercise, high-level performance, and swimming physiology.
Motor Control Lab: The Motor Control Laboratory specializes in the neuromuscular mechanisms involved in human movement, with an emphasis on aging and postural control. Using a variety of EMG, H-reflex, and balance protocols, the Motor Control Laboratory investigates the plasticity or adaptability of the human reflex system through training. Focus is on functional tasks and on the postural muscles of the lower limb. Current experiments are investigating the corrective responses in young and old adults to postural perturbations, and the ability to train these responses. Spinal mechanisms responsible for mediating these changes are being investigated.
Neuro-Behavioral Lab: The Neuro-Behavioral Lab provides insight into the neural regulation of goal directed movements. Recent lines of inquiry include visuo-motor control of prehensile (reaching and grasping) movements in closed-land, open-loop visual modalities; spatial accuracy of goal-directed movements in memory dependent contexts; sensorimotor transformations (visual to kinesthetic) involved in pointing to remembered targets; visual and non-visual components of skill acquisition; and the cerebral specialization for speech and limb movement.
Nutrition Science Laboratories: The Nutrition Science Laboratories provide practical experiences for students who major in dietetics or nutrition science. The food laboratory is used as an environment for food preparation, and to measure physical characteristics of foods, such as texture, that is force to penetrate or break, and color as lightness/darkness, red-blue, yellow to green. Students learn the science behind ingredient function and methods in cooking and food formulation and practice preparing meals that are used to help prevent or treat various diseases. Students also conduct research in food product formulation and use the laboratory instrumentation to objectively describe the food properties. The biochemistry facility consists of a series of laboratories that are used to study nutrition and food chemistry. The equipment allows students to master a variety of techniques, from wet-washing of foods and tissues for mineral analysis to quantification of cytokines by ELISA for biomarker analysis, or chemical analyses such as those for reducing sugars or specific amino acids. Faculty and research students have used these facilities to study concentration of minerals in human milk, expression of RNA for iron-binding proteins, and the cytokine and oxidative responses to high-fat meals and exercise.
Sport Psychology Lab: The Sport Psychology Laboratory specializes in psychobiological aspects of performance. Focus is on the relationship between psychological variables of stress/anxiety and physical performance.
