Prof. Orlando Alves da Silva
Ophthalmologist in Lisbon (Portugal). With Henrique Martins da Cunha, he is at the origin of the clinical description of the postural deficiency syndrome, today renamed proprioceptive dysfunction syndrome to insist on its perceptive nature. Indeed, from the original description of this syndrome, they both insisted on the sensory origin of the postural disorders presented by the patients and showed that these disorders were only one aspect of a dysfunction affecting many other domains. In a way, these two men are the founding fathers of ISPROD. We owe them a lot and the story of their discovery will help everyone to know the roots of a new field of medicine where so much remains to be discovered.

INTRODUCTION TO THE PHYSIOLOGY OF PROPRIOCEPTION

Prof. Régine Roll
With her husband Jean Pierre, Régine Roll has devoted her life to describing proprioceptive physiology and to understanding its role in cognition and movement. She has contributed to more than 60 international publications in this field and her expertise is unmatched worldwide. Beyond the fundamental work to understand the signs of proprioceptive dysfunction, "the Rolls" have created a school of scientific thought in this field which was almost ignored by medicine until the end of the last century.

OCULAR PROPRIOCEPTION AND ATTENTION

Daniela Balslev -PhD.
How do we pay attention? This is the question that neuroscientist Daniela Balslev is trying to answer at the University of St Andrews in Scotland (School of Psychology and Neuroscience). The only researcher in the world still interested in ocular proprioception in a fundamental way, she has described its major role in attentional phenomena, visual spatial localization and was the first to describe the localization of proprioceptive neurons within the cerebral cortex as well as the circuits ensuring synchronism between retinal and proprioceptive information.

THE BRAIN, MOVEMENT AND SPACE

Prof Alain Berthoz
Honorary Professor at the Collège de France, he is associated with the Centre Interdisciplinaire de Biologie du Collège de France (CIRB). Civil Engineer of the Mines, graduate in Psychology and Doctor of Science in Biomechanics and Neurosciences. Researcher at the CNRS until 1993. He founded and directed the Laboratory of Physiology of Perception and Action CNRS/Collège de France. He is an expert on the physiology of the major sensorimotor systems and on the relations between perception and action, with particular competence in the vestibular system, the neural bases of gaze and walking, and the neural bases of the processing and memory of space during navigation. He has used experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience and brain imaging (MRI, EEG, MEG etc.), as well as virtual reality. He has led numerous experiments in Human Physiology on board space stations. He has participated in numerous interdisciplinary actions and published with researchers of the Humanities and Social Sciences in fields as varied as Philosophy, Literature, Theory, Sociology, Law etc. He is president of the Orientation Committee of the Brain and Society program of the Institut d'Etudes Avancées de Paris. He has published more than 300 scientific papers and numerous popular scientific books and has received many international awards.

MOTOR SKILLS AND LANGUAGE

Prof Luciano Fadiga
He is a neurophysiologist at the Human Physiology Section of the University of Ferrara (Italy) and a senior researcher at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Genoa. He has a long experience in electrophysiology and neurophysiology in monkeys and has described many functional properties of the ventral premotor cortex. During this period, with his colleagues in Parma, he discovered mirror neurons, a class of neurons that respond both when the monkey performs actions and when it observes similar actions performed by other individuals. He showed that a mirror system also exists in humans. Other work has confirmed that a similar motor resonance is activated during speech listening and involves the motor centers related to language. He has participated in the European projects RobotCub, CONTACT and Poeticon and is currently working on the European projects Siempre and Poeticon. He interacts with roboticists to perform experiments on artifacts that would never be possible on living subjects. Within EU-IST, he is a strong supporter of the emerging cultural field of neurorobotics. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers in international journals. His work has received approximately 35,000 citations. He has served as Chair of the SH4 (Seed and Consolidation Grants) panel of the European Research Council (ERC).

Clinical training N°1

INTRODUCTION TO THE CLINIC OF PROPRIOCEPTION AND ITS ROLE IN MULTISENSORY INTEGRATION

Dr Patrick Quercia
Ophthalmologist specialized in pediatric ophthalmology, his activity is almost exclusively in the field of learning disorders and posture disorders. He is an associate researcher at the Cognition, Action and Sensorimotor Plasticity Laboratory of the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research and is involved in research on the relationship between proprioception and learning. He is co-founder and pedagogical director of the University Diploma on Perception Action and Learning Disorders at the University of Burgundy Franche Comté. He is the author of several books on the role of proprioception in learning and has co-authored with Dr. Alfredo Marino the reference book on the relationship between ocular and oral sensoriality.

Clinical training N°2

INTRODUCTION TO ORAL DYSPERCEPTION SYNDROME AND ITS ROLE IN MULTISENSORY INTEGRATION

Dr. Alfredo Marino

Doctor of Medicine, from the beginning of his career as an orthodontist, he was interested to understand the relationship between the oral apparatus and the postural system. A student of P.M. Gagey and later of H.M. da Cunha and O. Alves da Silva, he developed an innovative theory based on the oral sensory system, alternative and opposite to the classical mechanical concept of orthodontics. Following the sensory-motor concept, he discovered a series of postural and spatial orientation reflexes, from the oral apparatus, with a function similar to active prisms or postural inserts. In addition, thanks to the long collaboration with Dr. P. Quercia, the two doctors formalized the trigeminal interdependence between the visual and oral apparatus. Formerly a professor on contract at the University "La Sapienza" of Rome, he is now the scientific director of a university master's degree and of a health research center. He is the scientific director of a university master's degree and of a higher education course at the University of Bologna.