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Reposted by R. James Cotton

JAX Genomic Education @jaxeducation.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

💥 SPEAKER SPOTLIGHT: Hear from faculty whose work explores AI and computational approaches in #Neuroskyence. 🔹 James Cotton, Ph.D., Northwestern 🔹 Kristin Branson, Ph.D., HHMI Janelia Research Campus @peabody124.bsky.social @kristinmbranson.bsky.social ⏰ Register soon at jax.org/autobehavior!

Dark blue graphic reads, ""AI Enabled Biomechanics for Precision Rehabilitation" | James Cotton, Ph.D. | Northwestern University | 2026 Machine Learning Short Course | October 11 – 16 | Bar Harbor, ME & Virtual."

Dark blue graphic reads, ""Training & Interpreting Generative-AI models of Animal Behavior" | Kristin Branson, Ph.D. | HHMI Janelia Research Campus | 2026 Machine Learning Short Course | October 11 – 16 | Bar Harbor, ME & Virtual."

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Excited to present soon at #ISPRM2026 about the Future of Artificial Intelligence in Rehabilitation Medicine and to talk about some of the work we are doing with it at @abilitylab.bsky.social

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

If you are at American Spinal Injury Association meeting this year come check our course 4 at 2:40 to hear from the winners of our 2026 data challenge

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

And the precision neurorehabilitation satellite is a wrap! Had a great time and nice to hear this was a record size satellite for @ncmsociety.bsky.social! Hope everyone had a good time.

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Reposted by R. James Cotton

He (Helen) Huang @helenhuang.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Please consider submitting your research related to "Precision neurorehabilitation for movement disorders" to IEEE TNSRE. Thanks to the organizers of NCM satellite meeting, Profs Lee Miller and @peabody124.bsky.social

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

I want to like Gemini 3 but gemini-cli is the most enraging, terrible experience. It is so impulsive and while trying to develop a plan it just starts making random half baked code edits. No amount of agent file or memories seems to prevent this. It is unaligned and usless for anything complex.

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

At #SfN and want to hear about how BiomechGPT can provide a language interface to your biomechanics data? Checkout poster happening now at YY4 with Ruize Yang and @antihebbiann.bsky.social

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

If you are at @acrmrehab.bsky.social I will be presenting this morning (8am) SPECIAL SYMPOSIUM: Ai-powered Movement Analysis and a Causal Framework for Precision Rehabilitation SS1 #ACRM2025 cdmcd.co/5npwMR

This proposal outlines a scientific approach for advancing precision rehabilitation through a novel Causal Framework. The framework aims to optimize therapeutic interventions by integrating data science, artificial intelligence (AI), and causal inference. It synthesizes concepts from Computational Neurorehabilitation, the International Classification of Functioning and Disability (ICF), and the Rehabilitation Treatment Specification System (RTSS).
Central to this approach is the development of formal causal models, referred to as "digital twins," which simulate individual patient recovery trajectories. These models leverage heterogeneous, longitudinal data, encompassing clinical assessments and high-resolution measurements obtained via AI-powered movement analysis, such as computer vision-based gait analysis. The RTSS plays a critical role by enabling detailed documentation of treatment targets, active ingredients (viewed as causal influences), and mechanisms, which directly inform the construction of these causal models.
The resulting models allow for counterfactual analysis—predicting how a patient might respond to different interventions. This informs an Optimal Dynamic Treatment Regimen (ODTR), guiding the selection of therapies to maximize long-term function across multiple ICF levels (body function, activity, participation), focusing on patient-valued outcomes.
Illustrative case studies include EMG biofeedback for spinal cord injury, modeling its effects on motor function via mechanisms like activity-dependent plasticity, and post-stroke gait rehabilitation, integrating neurophysiology and kinematics to differentiate recovery mechanisms and predict outcomes from various interventions (e.g., high-intensity training, FES, AFOs).
The framework acknowledges challenges like data integration and model complexity, emphasizing the need for transdisciplinary efforts and advanced methods like causal representation learning.

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

Enjoyed presenting on "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly: AI for SCI Clinicians" with @ryansolinskymd.bsky.social and @josezariffa.bsky.social. Great enthusiasm from the crowd on the topic and the lively discussion and nice followup from precourse bsky.app/profile/ryan...

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Reposted by R. James Cotton

Ryan Solinsky, MD @ryansolinskymd.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

AI integration in spinal cord injury medicine precourse at the ASIA2025 meeting. Led by @peabody124.bsky.social and Dr. Sarah Brueningk. Learning lessons from other successful examples in Cancer, Alzheimer’s, Cardiology.

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

Over the last few years we have been developing methods for markerless motion capture of biomechanics and getting them into the clinics, such as at @abilitylab.bsky.social. We are now developing foundation models from these large datasets and testing what this enables. Two recent preprints:

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

Finally recovered from RehabWeek in Chicago, which was fantastic. It was a very successful week for the Intelligent Sensing and Rehabilitation lab at @abilitylab.bsky.social. (p.s. sorry below for anyone on BlueSky who I couldn't find/failed to tag)

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

Looking forward to presenting on what we can do with large-scale biomechanics data in rehabilitation in the SoMNiR #RehabWeek 2025 session this afternoon! @abilitylab.bsky.social

Screenshot from a chat interface for biomechanics

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

@jdpeiffer.bsky.social and Tim Unger gave a great talk in the ICORR best student paper session on their work using markerless motion capture to track arm kinematics of people with stroke. arxiv.org/abs/2411.14992

JD Peiffer presenting with a methods slide describing end-to-end differentiable biomechanics.

Tim Unger presenting with a slide showing arm kinematics

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

Really enoyed the session and engagement!

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Reposted by R. James Cotton

ASNR @asnrehab.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

Continuing our #ASNR2025 symposium on #ArtificialIntelligence and computational modeling in #neurorehabilitation, @peabody124.bsky.social discussed how his lab is quantifying gait-based biomarkers during functional mobility tasks in diverse clinical settings. #AI #neuroscience #rehabilitation

Dr. Cotton presenting onstage at #ASNR2025

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Reposted by R. James Cotton

ASNR @asnrehab.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

Don't miss our #ASNR2025 session on #AI and computational modeling to diagnose and treat functional mobility deficits! We can't wait to hear the latest from Drs. @lenating.bsky.social, @jlucasmckay.bsky.social, @peabody124.bsky.social, Trisha Kesar, & Hyeok Kwon! 🧠🔄 🧠📈 🧪 www.asnr.com/i4a/pages/in...

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

@ben-petrie.bsky.social gave a great #physiatry2025 presentation on EMG biofeedback for people with spinal cord injury and won first prize! Thanks to the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation for support for this project, and to all of our participants. Excited to share this soon in an upcoming manuscript!

Photo of Ben Petrie standing in front of his slide title "Gamified Electromyographic Biofeedback for People with Tetraplegia

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

Are you interested in data science and spinal cord injury? Looking for an opportunity to explore it? Then I highly recommend checking out the data science challenge organized through ASIA. www.kaggle.com/competitions... www.kaggle.com/competitions...

kaggle.com

Spinal Cord Injury Challenge - Functional Track

2025 American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA) Challenge: Prediction of functional recovery after traumatic spinal cord injury

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

I'm at APTA CSM: - (PD-21072) Pediatrics Research Forum Precision Rehabilitation 02/13/25 Time: 3:00PM-5:00PM - (NE-21770) Markerless Motion Capture Tools for Outcomes Assessment: Expanding Capacity and Diversity for Next Generation Neurorehabilitation. 02/14/25 Time: 11:00AM-1:00PM

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Pretty pleased about this work arxiv.org/abs/2502.06486 with @sinzlab.bsky.social showing how we can infer kinematic confidence intervals from multiview markerless motion capture. At least for our purposes, methods like this are equally important to traditional validation studies. #BiomechSky

arxiv.org

Biomechanical Reconstruction with Confidence Intervals from Multiview Markerless Motion Capture

Advances in multiview markerless motion capture (MMMC) promise high-quality movement analysis for clinical practice and research. While prior validation studies show MMMC performs well on average, the...

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Super stoked about the progress @jdpeiffer.bsky.social is making on monocular biomechanical analysis. Also really fun to connect back to my old drone hobby (and they are so much easier now than a decade ago buildandcrash.blogspot.com/2014/10/refl...)

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

The team did great work validating end-to-end optimization of markerless motion capture in the upper extremity for people with stroke. Compared to optical motion capture, tracking the elbow within a few degrees :). Other metrics are also great. Really enjoying the collaboration with LLUI!

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Reposted by R. James Cotton

Matthieu Boisgontier @matthieuboisgontier.com · 17/11/2024

This starter pack is intended for researchers in all areas of gait and posture - just let me know if you would like to be added. go.bsky.app/UaoaLRZ

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Been having some great conversations and presentations about this preprint since it came out. I'm really pleased by how postively many people are responding to it. I'd love to hear from the community of any people they know doing relevant causal inference work (rehab or not).

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

I enjoyed presenting at the ICOT meeting in Gran Cararia www.jornadasicotdca.com. Very fun learning and hearing more about international rehabilitation and seeing the vibrant community they have here!

Me standing at a podium presenting with a slide behind me in Spanish

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

I enjoyed speaking about this framework in my #ICNR2024 plenary and the amount of positive feedback about it. Looking forward to future interactions!

Me wearing a suit and presenting in front of a crowd with a slide to the right that shows our gait analysis tools

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

While rehabilitation is moving towards an era of big data, we still lack a framework to analyze this data to improve outcomes. We took a stab at this, which we call a "Causal Framework for Precision Rehabilitation." arxiv.org/abs/2411.03919

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 13/03/2024

Biomech friends: I've been trying to use the term "markerless motion capture" to refer to situations with multiple cameras and "human pose estimation" for single-camera work. However, as single-camera biomech estimates improve (stay tuned), I wonder if this distinction holds

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Reposted by R. James Cotton

Russell Johnson @russell-t-johnson.bsky.social · 14/12/2023

Here at NUPOC, my bluesky-less colleague is hiring a post-doc research scholar. If you are a recent or soon-to-be PhD grad (or know someone who is) and are interested in prosthetics, orthotics, and rehabilitation engineering, check out this opportunity! biomch-l.isbweb.org/forum/biomch...

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 11/11/2023

I'm looking for a postdoc and will be at SfN, so if you are interested in the intersection of AI/computer vision/wearables, gait analysis, and what this can tell us about the nervous system, please reach out!

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 18/09/2023

Loving how easy it is to take our #markerlessmocap system to the clinical floor and get tons of gait data (2300 trials from 220 sessions and counting!) Really nice to see we can even track people when multiple people are assisting.

Screenshot from a 3D visualization of gait analysis showing three people with one person helping to advance the legs and another providing assistance

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 18/09/2023

Great talk on regulatory capture. I appreciated the history behind why we have such bad EMRs and why Covid tests in US are overpriced. Important to consider as we develop medical AI and ensure it actually helps patients and clinicans. www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9cO...

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 06/09/2023

Super excited to give AbilityLab grand rounds today on Artificial Intelligence in Rehabilitation. Super important to make sure clinicians are engaged with this topic to influence how it evolves. Also so important for trainees to learn both the opportunities and to be aware of the risks.

Presenter (me) behind a podium holding microphone in front of a slide saying "what is deep learning?"

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R. James Cotton @peabody124.bsky.social · 03/08/2023

Had a great time with the lab today setting up our markerless motion capture system on the floor and getting tons of gait analysis during inpatient rehab.

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