Researcher

Jana Goyens

Research Expertise:Balance control is essential for animals that walk or run. Sensing the position and movement of the own body is crucial in this regard. The inner ear houses a small organ, the vestibular system, that senses rotational and linear accelerations of the head. In my post-doc, I investigate the functioning of this organ and how it’s anatomy is adapted to the species specific needs. For example, very agile, fast moving and maneuverable species may need a much more sensitive vestibular organ than slow moving animals. We use lacertid lizards in our comparative analyses, because there exists a large variation of both body sizes and types of habitat use in this closely related family.

Keywords:INNER EAR, KINEMATICAL ANALYSIS, VESTIBULAR, BALANCE, NATURAL SELECTION, EXPERIMENTAL STUDY, LIZARDS, FLUID MODELS, Biology

Disciplines:Biofluid mechanics, System and whole body biomechanics, Data visualisation and imaging, Biomechanics, Motor control

Research techniques:In my analyses, I use both experimental and computational approaches. For example, we analyse body kinematics based on high speed video recordings of running lizards, we compare the morphology of the vestibular system of lizards species based on micro CT scans and we construct Fluid-Structure Interaction computer models to understand the fluid mechanics in the vestibular system.

Users of research expertise:Researchers who are interested in using the Skyscan 1172 microCT scanner of the Biostruct consortium, can find more information on this website: https://sites.google.com/view/biostruct