E. Paul Zehr

E. Paul Zehr (born June 16, 1968) is a Canadian professor of kinesiology and neuroscience, and an award winning science communicator at the University of Victoria, in British Columbia, Canada. He is well known for his work in the neural control of human locomotion—particularly how the arms and legs interact during walking—and neural plasticity associated with exercise training and rehabilitation. Zehr is best known to the general public as the author of the popular science books Becoming Batman: The Possibility of a Superhero (2008), Inventing Iron Man: The Possibility of a Human Machine (2011), and Project Superhero (2014).

Becoming Batman addresses the scientific feasibility of a human being ever achieving peak of performance embodied by the Caped Crusader, and is essentially a guide for understanding how the human body works and responds to exercise. Zehr, a long-time reader of comic books, drew on the combined expertise gained in undergraduate (BPE, McMaster University) and graduate (MSc) training in kinesiology with his knowledge of neuroscience (PhD; University of Alberta) and his more than 25 years of personal experience in martial arts. A main point of Zehr’s book is that despite all the technology and gadgetry, there is a real person inside the batsuit who needs extreme training. Zehr often points out that this training includes not just Batman’s muscles but also his bones.

Inventing Iron Man examines the Marvel superhero as a biological control problem. The book explores what it would mean to the human body, and the nervous system particularly, to use an integrated exoskeleton like the Iron Man suit of armor. Inventing Iron Man explores deeply the concept of brain-machine interface and develops the thesis that such an exoskeleton could only work if it were connected directly to the brain of the user. A main focus are the changes that would occur in the nervous system (neural plasticity) as a result of prolonged use of such a comprehensive neuroprosthetic.

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