International Symposium on Sensorimotor Transformation
ISST 2026
October 15 & 16, 2026
The symposium will focus on sensorimotor transformations and the role of internal world models in perception, action, and adaptation. It will bring together researchers from neuroscience, neurotechnology, artificial intelligence, and robotics to examine how biological and artificial systems integrate sensory information, construct predictive representations of the environment, and translate these representations into goal-directed behavior.
We look forward to an interdisciplinary panel of leading experts, engaging discussions, and an inspiring series of poster sessions with early career researchers.
Prof. Dr. Ilka Diester
ISST 2026 Program Committee
BrainLinks-BrainTools Spokesperson
As a neurotechnology engineer, I am particularly excited about the opportunity to gain insights into the future needs and challenges of neuroscience.
Prof. Dr. Thomas Stieglitz
ISST 2026 Program Committee
BrainLinks-BrainTools Deputy Spokesperson
ISST 2026 Program
Agenda October 15, 2026
8:30
Registration
9:00
Opening
Ilka Diester
9:05
Towards Bidirectional Neuroprosthetics with Sensorimotor Transformation
Chair: Andreas Vlachos
Building intuitive, bidirectional neuroprosthetics is limited by our understanding of the brain’s complex sensorimotor transformation pathways. I will present new results revealing how proprioceptive perturbations and optogenetic silencing identify temporally phased cortico-cerebellar control policies that dictate reflexive motor corrections. These findings clarify how the brain coordinates essential sensorimotor transformations. Specifically, the data supports a hierarchical control architecture in which the cortex and cerebellum initially modulate spinal networks directly, followed by the activation of longer-latency transcortical and transcerebellar pathways. Together, these findings reveal how multiple sensorimotor loops are coordinated to support rapid movement adjustments, suggesting that bidirectional neuroprosthetics must incorporate the specific timing and hierarchical nature of these controllers.
Prof. Dr. Mario Prsa is head of the Sensorimotor Neuroscience lab at Dept. of Neuroscience and Movement Science, University of Fribourg, Switzerland.
Implantable brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) offer a powerful approach to restoring movement and sensation in people with paralysis by directly interfacing with neural circuits in the brain. By recording activity from motor cortex and delivering targeted stimulation to sensory areas, these systems can decode movement intentions and provide artificial sensory feedback with high temporal precision. In this talk, I will describe recent advances in implantable BCIs that enable paralyzed individuals to control bionic hands and regain meaningful sensory experiences. I will highlight key technological developments and current functional results, and the remaining challenges that must be addressed to translate implantable BCIs into long-term, reliable therapies.
Prof. Dr. Giacomo Valle is Assistant Professor in Bionics at the Dept. of Electrical Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology, Goteborg, Sweden.
Hand function plays an important role in all primate species, and its loss is associated with severe disability. Grasping movements are complex actions for which the primate brain integrates sensory and cognitive signals to generate meaningful behavior. To achieve this computation, specialized brain areas are functionally connected, in particular in the parietal (anterior intra parietal area, AIP), premotor (area F5), and primary motor cortex (M1 hand area). This presentation will highlight recent experimental results in non-human primates to characterize how populations of individual neurons in these cortical areas interact to generate grasping movements based on sensory signals, and how such neuronal population signals can be used to decode hand actions, e.g., for operating neural prostheses. Interestingly, these grasping circuits not only represent grasp-related activity, but they encode – in a mixed-selected fashion – also other features, like reach direction, hand laterality, or the expected reward of an intended action. The fronto-parietal grasp network might therefore integrate these supplementary signals with (extero- and proprioceptive) sensory information to optimize grasp planning and execution.
Prof. Dr. Hansjörg Scherberger is head of the Neurobiology lab at the German Primate Center – Leibniz Institute for Primate Research (DPZ) in Göttingen, Germany.
Bidirectional brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) are essential for restoring sensorimotor function, yet most current systems decode motor signals without providing sensory feedback. The primary somatosensory cortex (S1) is a key target for restoring touch and proprioception. We propose an optogenetic approach combining bicistronic expression, two-photon calcium imaging, and holographic stimulation to map and recreate tactile activity patterns in S1. We will discuss the potential of holographic optogenetics for precise writing of naturalistic population patterns. Further, the impact of stimulation timing based on local field potential burst states as indicators of optimal intervention windows will be discussed, as well as the exploration of projection-targeted activation to enhance stimulation efficacy and network engagement.
Prof. Dr. Ilka Diester is head of the Optophysiology lab and spokesperson of Brainlinks-BrainTools at the University of Freiburg, Germany.
10:40
Coffee Break
11:10
Human Sensorimotor Network Modulation: Mechanisms and Neurotechnology
Chair: Monika Schönauer
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) offers a powerful, non-invasive approach to probe and modulate human sensorimotor networks. This talk highlights advances in combining TMS with EEG and fMRI to assess excitability and plasticity across spatial and temporal scales. TMS-EEG captures cortical responses and oscillatory dynamics with high temporal resolution, revealing mechanisms of effective connectivity and state-dependent modulation. Complemen-tary TMS-fMRI maps distributed network responses and cortico-subcortical interactions. Em-phasis is placed on how ongoing brain state and task engagement shape both immediate re-sponses and plasticity. Together, these multimodal approaches provide a mechanistic frame-work for understanding and shaping sensorimotor function in humans.
Prof. Dr. Hartwig R. Siebner is heading the Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance (DRCMR) at Copenhagen University Hospital Hvidovre and the Precision Medicine Lab at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) enables causal interrogation and modulation of human brain function. However, substantial variability in stimulation outcomes remains a major challenge, emphasizing the need for improved targeting strategies and a better understanding of the biological mechanisms underlying TMS-induced plasticity. In this presentation, I will discuss recent advances in electric field-informed TMS targeting, including robotic neuronavigation and computational optimization approaches to improve motor mapping and hotspot identification. I will then present recent experimental work on the mechanisms of repetitive TMS-induced plasticity in human cortical tissue, highlighting cellular and synaptic processes that may contribute to the effects of non-invasive brain stimulation.
Prof. Dr. Andreas Vlachos is head of the of the Neuroanatomy Lab and Executive Board member of BrainLinks-BrainTools at University of Freiburg, Germany.
Flexible neural implants based on polymeric substrates and fabricated using advanced microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technologies have emerged as promising tools for neural interfacing. Their mechanical compliance reduces the mismatch between implant materials and surrounding tissue, thereby mitigating chronic tissue responses and improving long-term biocompatibility. These characteristics make flexible probes attractive candidates for applications requiring stable, long-term interactions with the nervous system.
Despite these advantages, several challenges remain, particularly with regard to implantation of the se neural interfaces into deep brain structures and the integration of additional functionalities within these highly compliant devices. The presentation highlights recent developments addressing these challenges through multifunctional implant concepts. Examples include (i) flexible fluidic probes enabling targeted drug delivery to hippocampal and cortical brain regions in rats, (ii) flexible probes designed for electrophysiological recordings from the brainstem of non-human primates, where access to deep structures imposes demanding mechanical and surgical constraints, and (iii) cochlear implants incorporating integrated light sources for optogenetic stimulation. These examples illustrate how multifunctional flexible implants can extend beyond conventional electrical recording and stimulation, providing new opportunities for advanced neuromodulation and neuroscience research while emphasizing the technological challenges that must be overcome for their successful implementation.
Dr. Patrick Ruther is senior scientist at the Microsystem Materials Lab and Executive Board member of BrainLinks-BrainTools at University of Freiburg, Germany.
12:25
Group Picture
12:35
Lunch Break & Poster Session 1
14:05
Neural Circuits of Movement Control
Chair: Julian Ammer
Movement is the behavioral output of the nervous system. This talk will cover recent work elucidating the organization and function of neuronal circuits central to the regulation of body movements, with a focus on skilled forelimb movements. It will show that dedicated circuit modules in different regions of the brainstem and their interactions within the motor system play key roles in the generation of highly specific and diverse movements.
Prof. Dr. Silvia Arber is head of the Motor Circuit Function group at Biozentrum, University of Basel, and at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Basel, Switzerland.
Knowing when something will happen may be as important as knowing what or where. The ability to anticipate the timing of sensory events — and use that anticipation to prepare and optimize actions — is a fundamental sensorimotor transformation, yet its neural basis remains poorly understood. To investigate how the brain builds and exploits the temporal structure of events, we trained mice in a multisensory paradigm in which they learned the statistical timing of auditory-visual stimuli and used this knowledge to guide motor responses. Mice that successfully formed temporal expectations showed faster, more precisely timed behaviour, while those that did not adopted alternative behavioural strategies — revealing striking individual variability. Using two-photon calcium imaging, we found that the posterior parietal cortex encodes both the anticipation of upcoming events and signals when timing expectations are violated. Complementary whole-brain MRI revealed that the capacity for temporal expectation is linked to experience-dependent plasticity in hippocampal and frontoparietal networks. Together, our findings position temporal expectation as a core component of predictive sensorimotor processing, shaped by learning strategy and implemented across circuits that span from single-cell local cortical dynamics to brain-wide network organization.
Prof. Dr. Janelle Pakan is head of the Neural Circuits and Network Dynamics group at the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology, Magdeburg, Germany.
The mammalian nervous system has evolved to perform a wide variety of actions essential for survival. From object manipulation and tool use to complex locomotion and prey capture, the brain continuously processes sensory information to select, initiate and adapt our movements to meet environmental demands. Our overarching goal is to understand the circuit mechanisms that underly these processes, with a focus on how distributed brain regions coordinate their activities to initiate and control flexible movements. In this talk, I will discuss our work on a particular subset of motor cortex projection neurons, corticospinal neurons, that have direct access to spinal cord circuits involved in skilled motor control. By combining population calcium imaging, projection mapping, and modelling in mice performing a Go/NoGo lever-push task, we reveal that distinct corticospinal neuron subpopulations with opposing dynamics (i.e. increased or decreased activity) are selectively associated with skilled movement execution. Both activity profiles are observed throughout CSN somatodendritic compartments and are spatially organized, with increased activity concentrated in upper layer 5B and decreased activity localized to deeper subregions. Notably, single-neuron projection mapping revealed that opposing CSN signals converge onto shared spinal interneurons, while modelling showed that reduced CSN output drives subtractive modulation of spinal interneuron input-output transformations, avoiding output saturation and enabling flexible scaling of output firing rates. These findings redefine corticospinal function by demonstrating that reduced output in a subpopulation of CSNs is critical for shaping spinal cord computations during skilled movement execution
Prof. Dr. Ian Duguid is head of the Duguid lab at the Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences, and Senior Research Fellow at Simons Initiative for the Developing Brain, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
15:40
Coffee Break & Poster Session 2
16:25
Chair: Christian Leibold
This talk will discuss a view of sensorimotor transformation in which cortical circuits transform sensation into action through recurrent loops, contextual input and dendritic plasticity. I will focus on the role of layer 5 extratelencephalic pyramidal neurons as two-compartment neurons whose basal and apical dendrites integrate different streams of task-relevant information. Recent work from our lab shows that apical tuft dendrites in frontal motor cortex are required for flexible relearning, but not for the execution of already learned behaviour. I will relate these findings to the idea that frontal cortex generates action-relevant questions or affordances that become contextual input for sensorimotor circuits. Finally, I will discuss the biophysical and anatomical features of cortex that make this possible, and in particular how layer 6b/higher-order thalamus and their influence on cortical pyramidal neurons provide mechanisms for flexible, attention-dependent sensorimotor transformation.
Prof. Dr. Matthew Larkum is head of the Larkum lab at Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany.
17:10
Panel Discussion
Prof. Dr. Oliver Brock is head of the Robotics and Biology Laboratory at TU Berlin.
Prof. Dr. Ilka Diester is head of the Optophysiology lab and spokesperson of Brainlinks-BrainTools at the University of Freiburg, Germany.
Prof. Dr. Thomas Fuchs is head of the Section “Phenomenological Psychopathology and Psychotherapy” at the Department of General Psychiatry, University Hospital Heidelberg, Research Director of the Karl Jaspers Complete Edition at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and Chair of the German Society for Phenomenological Anthropology, Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (DGAP).
Prof. Dr. Thomas Stieglitz is head of the Biomedical Microtechnology Lab and deputy spokesperson of BrainLinks-BrainTools at the University of Freiburg, Germany.
18:10
End of Day 1
Agenda October 16, 2026
9:00
Sensorimotor Transformation in Robotics I
Chair: Joschka Bödecker
This talk addresses sensorimotor learning in contact-rich robotics, focusing on how robots can couple perception, force-based interaction, and high-level decision making to acquire and execute complex manipulation skills in uncertain environments. At the low level, we consider force-based control policies that exploit physical constraints imposed by the environment rather than treating contact as a disturbance. Building on hierarchical reinforcement learning, graph-based task representations, and constraint-space following control, robots can efficiently learn contact policies for tasks such as assembly, disassembly, and other manipulation problems in which compliant interaction is essential.
At the cognitive level, we show how vision-language models can support action prediction, execution monitoring, and adaptive task progression in situations where explicit programming of all contingencies is impractical. By combining visual input, textual task descriptions, and structured representations of available robot skills, such models can help determine suitable next actions, assess whether previously executed steps were successful, and support adaptation when the observed task state departs from expectations. This is particularly important in domains such as disassembly and recycling, where objects vary in design, condition, and accessibility, and where robust perception-action coupling is needed for reliable autonomy.
Prof. Dr. Aleš Ude is head of Automatics, Biocybernetics, and Robotics at Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
I will present our work on Model-based Reinforcement learning and the surprising struggles with learning accurate prediction models for contact-rich tasks. I will start by showing the power of intrinsically motived exploration in model-based reinforcement learning and the effictiveness of on-line planning methods to perform well in unseen tasks zero-shot.
In the second part of the talk, I will present our new Belt-Finger that is a parallel jaw gripper which allows for in-hand manipulation and tactile sensing.
Prof. Dr. Georg Martius is group leader at MPI for Intelligent Systems and head of the Distributed Intelligence Lab at Tübingen University, Germany.
Physics world models are the new thing in robot control. Will it work beyond the research lab? The problem isn’t scale or data. Predicting the world and predicting the sensory consequences of your actions are not the same. I’ll show where this makes deployment hard, and how we can address this.
Prof. Dr. Patrick van der Smagt is head of AI & Engineering at Foundation Robotics, Munich, Germany.
10:35
Coffee Break
11:05
Sensorimotor Transformation in Robotics II
Chair: Abhinav Valada
In this presentation, I will explore parallels between sensorimotor control grounded in neuroscience and the motor control mechanisms used in humanoid robots. By examining various methodologies, I will demonstrate how both biological systems and artificial agents acquire motor skills through learning processes. Additionally, I will discuss the methods used to validate this learning within the context of humanoid robotics, emphasising the implications for developing advanced robotic systems capable of mimicking human-like movements and interactions. This exploration aims to provide insights that can enhance robot design and functionality by deepening our understanding of human motor control. Furthermore, I will showcase examples that illustrate the effectiveness of this approach in humanoid task and skill learning. I will conclude the talk by discussing recent advancements that have contributed to the restoration and rehabilitation of human motor functions.
Prof. Dr. Gordon Cheng is head of the Institute for Cognitive Systems at TUM and coordinator of the Center of Competence Neuro-Engineering at LMU Munich, Germany.
The remarkable advances in generative AI have sparked a new wave of robotics research leveraging Diffusion / Flow Matching Models and Vision Language Models, with the ultimate goal of developing Behavior Foundation Models for robotic systems. However, current state-of-the-art approaches face significant limitations that hinder widespread deployment: these models are exceptionally large, resource-intensive, and slow, while requiring vast amounts of diverse data for pre-training VLM-based models on spatial and robotic tasks. These constraints, combined with critical privacy concerns, severely limit the practical deployment of foundation models in real-world robotic applications.
This talk presents our recent contributions addressing these limitations across the full model stack. We introduce more compute and parameter efficient architectures for diffusion-based policies that maintain strong performance while significantly reducing inference cost. We present compact vision-language-action models that achieve strong performance through novel multimodal fusion and action generation mechanisms. We propose a structured action representation based on movement primitives that improves both performance and sample efficiency over standard tokenization approaches. We further address the spatial reasoning gap in current vision-language backbones through a targeted auto-annotation pipeline that generates high-quality training data specifically aiming to increase spatial reasoning capabilities. Together, these contributions present a concrete path towards Behavior Foundation Models that are efficient and data-frugal enough for on-premise deployment in real-world robotic applications.
Prof. Dr. Rudolf Lioutikov is head of the Intuitive Robots Lab at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany.
Robots and other physical-AI systems must continuously turn partial, noisy, multimodal sensory streams into purposeful action. This talk argues that the key to doing so efficiently and reliably lies in where structure enters the representations and world models mediating perception and control — whether imposed as an inductive bias or set up to emerge from the learning objective. I will give a short tour of three complementary lines of recent world-model work from Freiburg: structured latent world models for model-based control, where a latent linear-quadratic form and a factored, per-actuator decomposition enable efficient, scalable planning; large-scale self-supervised world models for driving, which pair architectural inductive biases — a hierarchical abstraction and a two-stage tokenizer–predictor design — with structure that emerges from forward prediction, such as depth, semantics, and object independence; and sensorimotor transformations for mobile manipulation, from geometric and cross-modal representations to interaction as active perception.
Prof. Dr. Joschka Bödecker is head of the Neurobotics lab and deputy spokesperson of BrainLinks-BrainTools at University of Freiburg, Germany.
12:30
Lunch Break & Poster Session 3
14:00
Multisensory neuronal dynamics for goal directed behavior
Chair: Thomas Stieglitz
Highly-distributed neurons across the mouse brain appear to interact dynamically to transform incoming sensory information into goal-directed motor output for adaptive behavior. In this talk, investigating head-restrained thirsty mice, I will focus on how tactile information from a single whisker is processed across different anatomically-connected nodes transforming subjectively-perceived sensory information into motor control signals to initiate licking of a water reward spout. Through optical imaging and electrophysiological recordings, our current research focuses on two specific aspects: i) Learning – we aim to define the neuronal plasticity mechanisms underlying reward-based goal-directed sensorimotor task learning; and ii) Context – we investigate how auditory cues can be used to gate the sensorimotor transformation of licking in response to whisker deflection in order to define the neuronal circuit mechanisms underlying context-dependent task execution.
Prof. Dr. Carl Petersen is head of the Laboratory of Sensory Processing at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland.
How do cortical circuits integrate multisensory information to support flexible decision-making? Answering this requires understanding both cortical hierarchy and cell-type-specific computations. We therefore performed functional imaging and optogenetic perturbations in mice performing a visuotactile evidence-accumulation task. Despite superadditive multisensory responses in parietal and frontal cortex, behavioral performance matched an additive combination of unisensory evidence. Visual and tactile evidence was preferentially accumulated in distinct cortical regions and converged into modality-independent choice signals late in the trial in frontal cortex. To further dissect the underlying circuit mechanisms, we separately measured cortex-wide activity of pyramidal-tract (PT) and intratelencephalic (IT) neurons. PT and IT neurons showed pronounced differences in sensory coding, spatial specificity, and choice-related dynamics. Across learning, the two cell types showed opposite changes: PT activity in frontal cortex became less prominent as animals improved, while IT activity became more tightly coupled to behavioral performance. Axonal recordings in subcortical targets confirmed that these divergent dynamics propagate along distinct output pathways. Together, these findings reveal a hierarchical cortical circuit in which modality-specific evidence accumulation and cell-type-specific output channels jointly enable flexible multisensory choices and adaptive learning.
Prof. Dr. Simon Musall is head of the in-vivo neurophysiology lab at Forschungszentrum Jülich and Junior Professor of Neuromodulation at RWTH Aachen, Germany.
Foraging requires integrated processes of selection (decision-making) and planning of goal-directed movements toward the next target. Both cognitive skills are associated with the frontoparietal sensorimotor network in primates but are typically studied in the highly constrained settings of touchscreen-based reaching or saccade tasks. Starting from this framework, I will discuss how spatial sensory information and context-specific valuation signals are integrated during planning and selection of goal-directed action. I will review recent finding showing that dorsal stream spatial encoding adapts to an egocentric or allocentric (object-centered) spatial frame of reference depending on cognitive demand, that neural dynamics map spatial information onto spatial motor goals differently depending on context, and that spatial uncertainty about the own body or the target affect different phases of action planning. Expanding the framework to full-body movements, I will then demonstrate that the planning horizon of frontoparietal networks is not restricted to the near space, but extends to distant targets. In experiments with freely-moving rhesus monkeys, we found that frontoparietal cortex encodes the location and selection of goals at distances beyond immediate reach similar to within-reach goals, while primary motor cortex reflects the immediate adjustment of walking movements. I will discuss how the combination of frontoparietal functions in cortex is highly relevant for goal-directed action during social foraging in terrains with distributed food sources.
Prof. Dr. Alexander Gail is head of the Sensorimotor Neuroscience and Neuroprosthetics Group at the German Primate Center and the University of Göttingen, Germany.
15:35
Coffee Break & Poster Session 4
16:20
Movement control in invertebrates
Chair: Ilka Diester
In goal-directed legged locomotion, animals modify the movements of their extremities and the coordination between them in specific ways to serve the presumed tasks. Examples for this comprise walking at different speeds, walking forward or backward, turning with different radii, and, finally, surmounting gaps and obstacles. The motor output for driving the associated contractions of leg muscles depends on the action of descending commands from the animal’s brain onto the neural machinery for generating movements of single legs and their coordination. These circuits reside in the ventral nerve cord (VNC) of insects or the spinal cord of vertebrates. Here, I will report on our recent advances in understanding the role that proprioceptive feedback signals about movements and forces (or load) from the insect legs play in the task-specific control of single leg kinematics for walking and for inter-leg coordination. In conjunction with the availability of the connectome of the insect VNC, these recent findings can guide future investigations that specifically aim to understand the circuit mechanisms by which descending and intersegmental signals interact with local networks for generation of motor flexibility in walking animals.
Prof. Dr. Ansgar Büschges is head of the AG Büschges at the Institute of Zoology, University of Cologne, Germany, and president of the German Neuroscience Society.
Honey bees routinely forage kilometers from their hive, requiring robust spatial navigation. Using a novel multicopter drone tracking system, we resolved bee foraging flights at high spatial and temporal resolution. We discovered extraordinary navigational precision: individual bees fly characteristic trajectories, routinely passing within 30 centimeters of their own previous flights, while paths between different bees form distinct, individual-specific clusters. To investigate how a miniature brain learns such precise routes, we trained artificial agents in a virtual landscape using reinforcement learning. We found that an artificial neural network constrained by bee brain anatomy, utilizing a neural circuit from the mushroom bodies to encode reward prediction errors via dopaminergic feedback, can implement temporal difference learning to replicate key behavioral features of insect navigation. Moving forward, we propose that the insect internal world model is evolutionarily pre-tuned for rapid visual memory acquisition, enabling robust, large-scale natural navigation with minimal neural circuitry.
Prof. Dr. Andrew D. Straw is head of the Straw Lab and member of BrainLinks-BrainTools at the University of Freiburg, Germany.
17:00
Closing remarks and Poster Prize
Ilka Diester
17:15
End of Conference
Venue
Child care
Program Committee
Dr. Julian Ammer, University of Freiburg
Prof. Dr. Joschka Bödecker, University of Freiburg
Prof. Dr. Ilka Diester, University of Freiburg
Prof. Dr. Marcus Jeschke, University of Göttingen
Prof. Dr. Tobias Moser, University of Göttingen
Dr. Patrick Ruther, University of Freiburg
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thomas Stieglitz, University of Freiburg
Prof. Dr. Abhinav Valada, University of Freiburg
Prof. Dr. Andreas Vlachos, University of Freiburg
Poster Committee
Dr. Julian Ammer, University of Freiburg
Dr. Simon Binder, University of Freiburg
Prof. Dr. Marcus Jeschke, University of Göttingen
Jun.-Prof. Maria Kalweit, University of Freiburg
Dr. Joana Pereira, Universtity of Freiburg
