Priscilla Balestrucci
Papers
2
Total Citations
9
H-Index
1
About
Priscilla Balestrucci is a rising researcher in sensorimotor neuroscience, whose work explores how the human brain integrates touch, movement, and prior beliefs to control dexterous hand actions. Her research centers on the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying reaching and grasping, with a particular focus on how tactile feedback and learned assumptions about the physical world shape motor behavior. In her most cited work, "The relativity of reaching: Motion of the touched surface alters the trajectory of hand movements" (2024, 8 citations), Balestrucci challenges a fundamental prior—that inanimate objects remain stationary upon contact—by showing that moving a touched surface systematically distorts hand trajectories. This reveals the powerful role of touch in online motor control. Her follow-up study, "Partial adaptation to surface movement during hand reaching" (2025, 1 citation), demonstrates that while humans can adapt to such environmental changes, strong a priori assumptions lead to persistent systematic errors, highlighting the limits of motor flexibility. Balestrucci’s findings have implications for understanding haptic perception, robotic teleoperation, and rehabilitation after stroke. Her work is notable for elegantly bridging psychophysics and computational models of sensorimotor integration, offering fresh insights into how we interact with a dynamic world.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1
- 2Partial adaptation to surface movement during hand reaching1 citations · 2025