Effects of task complexity on grip-to-load coordination in bimanual actions
- PDF / 582,315 Bytes
- 9 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 98 Downloads / 195 Views
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Effects of task complexity on grip-to-load coordination in bimanual actions Stacey L. Gorniak · Jay L. Alberts
Received: 17 April 2012 / Accepted: 21 December 2012 / Published online: 10 January 2013 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
Abstract We investigated within- and between-hand grip and load force coordination in healthy young subjects during bimanual tasks involving realistic manual actions. Actions involving disparate actions of the two hands (bimanual asymmetry) were expected to result in lower overall measures of within- and between-hand measures of grip and load force coordination. As dissociation between two hands performing disparate actions may be expected, it was also hypothesized that increased task asymmetry would result in a shift toward higher within-hand force coordination. Features such as object rotation were found to reduce some, but not all indices of both within- and between-hand force coordination. The action of connecting two independent
objects was associated with declines in all indices of withinand between-hand force coordination. Evidence of taskspecific differences in force application timing and a trend toward within-hand grip-load coordination differences in the current data set suggest that individual hand specification emerges naturally in everyday bimanual prehension tasks, independent of the action role of the assigned to the dominant and non-dominant hands. Keywords Bimanual · Prehension · Coordination · Grasping forces · Rotation
Introduction S. L. Gorniak (*) Department of Health and Human Performance, University of Houston, 3855 Holman St., Garrison 104U, Houston, TX 77204-6015, USA e-mail: [email protected] S. L. Gorniak Center for Neuromotor and Biomechanics Research, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204, USA S. L. Gorniak Center for Neuro-Engineering and Cognitive Science, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204, USA J. L. Alberts Department of Biomedical Engineering, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH 44195, USA J. L. Alberts Center for Neurological Restoration, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH 44195, USA J. L. Alberts Cleveland FES Center, Louis Stokes VA Medical Center, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA
Many activities of daily living (ADLs), such as opening containers or tying laces, require the limbs to complement each other in performing object-oriented tasks. The coordination of grasping and load-bearing force between the two hands is necessary in order to prevent unintended events such as slippage or rotation of the object(s) in any of the three dimensions. The tightly controlled relationship between grip and load force coordination in a variety of manual actions has been cited as a crucial aspect to preventing object slip by maintaining the safety margin in grasping (Augurelle et al. 2003; Flanagan et al. 1993; Flanagan and Wing 1993; Kinoshita et al. 1997). However, the tight coupling of grip and load force in manual actions has been found to be mitigated by age and neurological pathology (Blennerhassett et al. 2006; Dun et al. 2007; F
Data Loading...
