good afternoon thank you all for being here today so um after we will finish with all these wonderful TED talks and we may still feel energetic and we may decide actually to go to a bar now while you're in a bar uh you may actually decide to play game of darts and while you're playing this game of darts you may realize that you cannot always hit Bulls if you will please let me know and I will be your manager and we can make some really good monies together okay but you're not going to be always
be able to hit Bullseye and guess what even professional Dodge thrower cannot do so and this actually can extend to other actually Sports as well too let's for example take basketball even the best basketball players cannot hit 100% of their free throws but if Will take this down to very fundamental tasks let's say for example walking in terms of walking you are actually like LeBron James you've practiced working for years and years and years and years but guess what if you will actually see your steps behind you on the snow they're never exactly the same
this is what we call actually in movement repetition without repetition and this variation in terms of movement is a fact of life now people for years believed actually that this variability is just simply noise in the system that we want to get rid of it so it's kind of like when you drive to work and you're trying to listen to the beautiful Crystal Crystal voice of Lady Gaga and you mess around with you mess around with a dial a little bit to just get rid of that noise over your voice actually so your Crystal Voice
can come out okay so that's what you're trying to do well people actually thought that variability is exactly the same if somehow I can get rid of it I'll be perfect I'll be a perfect Dart thrower I will be a perfect basketball player but how can that be possible as we mentioned earlier if variability is actually a fact for life this doesn't make even make sense so it didn't make sense to me it didn't make sense to me that this variability is just simp simply bad for you it seems actually illogical it seems actually impractical
so what I thought I should do I thought I will challenge this actually I thought I will challenge this idea and my idea was that variability will be actually something that will be useful something that should be embraced but what I needed to do in order for me to prove my idea was to put movement under the microscope now the same way that long time ago they put blood under the microscope and they saw all kind of amazing things that our eyes cannot see the same thing holds through with movement you see our eyes can
only see only 12 to 12 pictures per second the instrumentation that we have in biomechanics can actually see hundreds or even thousands of pictures per second and in this fashion I can see the variations from one step to the next to the next to the next to the next so I started walking on a treadmill I started walking for example overg ground but also we looked at all kind of like other situations in terms of this very simple and fundamental task for example like what happens when you walk in the forest in a virtual reality
type of environment uh also for example we look at how young kids walk how older individuals actually walk how people actually who they have pathologies actually walk we look at all kind of different situations we look also other simple task as well too how about standing there is variability in standing as well too you cannot stand perfectly still you actually you will close your eyes you sway even more you see the sway variability actually there uh so now when we put actually variability under the microscope what we were actually able to see all kind of
like very very interesting things first of all we're actually able to see that small pieces of the data small small pieces of movement variations over time they look like very very similar with a bigger piece of the data this is like very very similar with the shitsky triangle you take a smaller piece of the triangle and it looks very very similar almost exactly the same with a bigger one now and this was not the only thing that we're actually able to see when we looked at these variations closely we're actually able to see that there
were like few big movements bunch of actually many mediumsized movements and a huge number of very very small size movements as well too so there was like a very interesting distribution as well there now such patterns actually exist everywhere we see them actually in nature in terms of trees in terms of clouds in terms of lighting we also see them inside of us we see them in the lungs we see them in the intestines we see them in the cardiovascular system and and again what we mean by that we see like few big branches many
mediumsized branches and a huge number of small siiz branches so we are part of Nature and nature does not work in imperfection it is in our imperfection that we are actually beautiful and perfect now we also very much like such patterns as well too when we listen to music for example we don't like music with which is monotonous we like music that actually has that type of a distribution that doesn't even have like huge changes as well too and we see this in all kind of like other things as well too now through our work
also we're actually able to find out what's going on with pathology pathology actually destroys those patterns and can make you actually one of two things one can also can make you very very rigid like a robot the danger danger danger I'm a robot okay now if you're very robotic what happens actually you lose this adaptability your variations over time they're exactly the same and you lose your ability to be adaptable to different terrains and we see that with knee injuries now also pathology can also make you kind of like being all over the place like
a frail older adult who kind of like is very unbalanced the same thing however could happen because of the effect of other things we have the phenomena of the drunken scientist like me if I have one too many for example I'm kind of like like that too okay I'm kind of like all over the place as well too okay many big movements okay so in other words what is actually health health what we found out about health is actually a state where you actually have this complex but beautiful patterns if you will lose this on
one side you can be very very rigid like a robot or you can actually like be very very noisy and kind of like all over the place like the frail older adult and through our modeling work we're actually able to identify that when you're rigid like that or when you're are actually all over the place if we will actually push the model just with a small force it will fall but when you actually exhibit this complex and beautiful patterns you can can withstand actually even much much larger force in terms of a fall now this
reminds me a lot something that actually shinger and you might know shreding your shinger scat this famous experiment who actually said in 1994 say something very very similar life is an a periodic crystal is not random and it's not periodic it is something in between so I believe that variability could actually be the spice of life now one thought that may be brewing in your mind right now it is Nick if something happens to me can is there any way that I can get these healthy patterns back okay well yeah we've been studying this for
years and years and years actually so I'll give you like three different types of experimental work that we've done that actually says the that the answer to this is actually yes first of all uh let me talk to you a little bit about our virtual reality work so if you will actually put a weight on one side of an individual you give him a limp if there is a big weight you give him a limp okay and you see this in these two graphs up there actually in these two figures this is depicted actually on
what the one side is the pick with this red dots and the other side is the pick with the green dots and um they're kind of like far away from each other on the left side type of a of a graph where you actually like see 200 steps over time and you see actually the time that they spend on the ground but what if I tell you that then were exposed into virtual reality this DS they came together as you see here in the data okay so practically Vision overall the sensation of the weight and
you actually achieve again Symmetry and not only you achieve again symmetry you achieved actually this healthy pattern I was talking to you earlier how about that that is actually truly a Noel and serendipitous result and this actually led us to now experiment with goggles where we actually incorporate virtual reality environments that you walk on them but they vary over time based on this healthy patterns that I talked to you earlier and we can do all kind of like very interesting things actually with this virtual reality environments and you can pick the one that you like
in addition to this we are exploring actually htic information vibratory devices who they can vibrate based actually on these patterns that I mentioned earlier and we are doing this work right now with amputees now another body of work that we did is with babies now with babies actually we focused on babies because again we have this variability problem over there in terms of sway variability in sitting I mentioned to you earlier about standing but what about sitting as well too when we have a baby that has actually motor delays early in life and cannot actually
accomplish the skill of sitting we see that they actually don't have these healthy patterns in their sway they kind of like all over the place or they are very very rigid so what we thought is like we thought about developing an intervention that will actually help these babies achieve the sitting posture on time why because if you don't achieve it on time that will translate to problems actually later in life in terms of standing watching etc etc so in terms of babies who they had a motor delay that they make them very very rigid and
hypotonic and static we actually provided environmental adaptations that will actually try to push them out of this uh out of this static type of a situation and will enhance variability when we had actually like babies who they were kind of like all over the place expressed with movements like back and forth like this we provided soft constraints that allow them actually to discover in between the soft constraints so here is some some results so in this video we see actually a child that has a very very hard time sitting you see how difficult it is
for this child to sit it continuously Falls as soon as you let it go it will fall what about if you will see the same child couple of months later after was being exposed in our intervention isn't that amazing isn't that amazing well if I'll go to heaven it's going to be because of things like that okay so this is a tremendous result actually a tremendous result and what if I tell you that actually our intervention does better than the standard care of treatment now this intervention has been published and it's available for physical therapist
to use now the last piece of experimental work that I want to speak to you about is I want to speak to you a little bit about the the work that we did with olders who they are susceptible to fals what we did with them we actually took music that uh we slowed it down or we speed it up and based on the speed of the individual and then what we did we took the notes and we incorporated variability into the notes okay we made actually the notes uh either coming faster or slower but in
between the notes actually we changed the distance between in the notes based on this healthy patterns that I mentioned to you earlier and then we had actually the older adults step on this now let me play some music to you just to see exactly what I mean with that I'm going to be your TJ for a little bit okay all [Applause] right now here the notes always come with the same distance time distance that is and of course you recognize f release now now you see here the variations sometime they go slower sometimes they go
faster and stuff like that this is actually based on these healthy patterns that I mentioned to you earlier so now imagine that we have an older adult who is susceptible to fals but practice is actually uh on this music stepping on this Rhythm actually in the comfort of their house based on whatever music that they like to okay not just few Rel leas maybe Lady Gaga well anyway with all this in mind actually what is my problems now my problems now is actually how to actually help these people how to translate my research to help
these people right at home so for example for the older adults how to translate actually this music so I can so older adults can use it in their in their homes and also the other things that I mentioned to you like the goggles for example how we can translate those things for older adults also who they have like maybe an asymmetry can use in their homes but also how to extend these research uh in other pathologies so let's say for example with amputees with individuals who they have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease uh who they have
stroke who they have Parkinson and not only that now that you know this information what is your problems uh well how can you actually if you will think about it the question will be like how can you maintain your Healthy patterns um well I suggest to you variable training okay and what do we mean with this variable training well first of all let's take this distribution that I mentioned the yearly so uh and for an example let's say that you are lifting well incorporate that dist distribution in your lifting maybe you can have like few
large lifts many mediumsized lifts and a huge number of small lifts uh or for example you can incorporate this into your diet let's say as well too because it could expand to a lot of other things what do we mean in terms of diet well maybe couple of pie of chocolate who they have like a huge amount of calories okay many pieces of food they have like some like a medium size of calories and then by of vegetables they have very little amount in terms of calories as well too but uh this actually could extend
to all kind of like uh stages in terms of your life V this variable train you can incorporate variability in almost everything that you do consider for example driving to work take a different route every day incorporate variability in your life this small changes actually could go a long way this variability in your life could go a long way because as I mentioned to you varability could be the spice of life thank you very much
