Dataset Information

Independent Long Fingers are not Essential for a Grasping Hand.

ABSTRACT: The human hand is a complex integrated system with motor and sensory components that provides individuals with high functionality and elegant behaviour. In direct connection with the brain, the hand is capable of performing countless actions ranging from fine digit manipulation to the handling of heavy objects. However the question of which movements mostly contribute to the manipulation skills of the hand, and thus should be included in prosthetic hands, is yet to be answered. Building from our previous work, and assuming that a hand with independent long fingers allowed performance comparable to a hand with coupled fingers, here we explored the actual contribution of independent fingers while performing activities of daily living using custom built orthoses. Our findings show that, when an opposable thumb is present, independent long fingers provide a measureable advantage in performing activities of daily living only when precision grasps are involved. In addition, the results suggest that the remarkable grasping skills of the human hand rely more on the independent abduction/adduction of the fingers than on their independent flexion/extension. These findings are of interest to the designers of artificial hands, including biomimetic prostheses and exoskeletons.

SUBMITTER: Montagnani F

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5069547 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Independent Long Fingers are not Essential for a Grasping Hand.

Montagnani Federico F Controzzi Marco M Cipriani Christian C

Scientific reports 20161019

The human hand is a complex integrated system with motor and sensory components that provides individuals with high functionality and elegant behaviour. In direct connection with the brain, the hand is capable of performing countless actions ranging from fine digit manipulation to the handling of heavy objects. However the question of which movements mostly contribute to the manipulation skills of the hand, and thus should be included in prosthetic hands, is yet to be answered. Building from our ...[more]

PMID: 27759046

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Project description:Human can successfully grasp various objects in different acceptable relative positions between human hand and objects. This grasp functionality can be described as the grasp tolerance of human hand, which is a significant functionality of human grasp. To understand the motor control of human hand completely, an analysis of hand and wrist postural synergies in tolerance grasping of various objects is needed. Ten healthy right-handed subjects were asked to perform the tolerance grasping with right hand using 6 objects of different shapes, sizes and relative positions between human hand and objects. Subjects were wearing CyberGlove attaching motion tracker on right hand, allowing a measurement of the hand and wrist postures. Correlation analysis of joints and inter-joint/inter-finger modules were carried on to explore the coordination between joints or modules. As the correlation between hand and wrist module is not obvious in tolerance grasping, individual analysis of wrist synergies would be more practical. In this case, postural synergies of hand and wrist were then presented separately through principal component analysis (PCA), expressed through the principal component (PC) information transmitted ratio, PC elements distribution and reconstructed angle error of joints. Results on correlation comparison of different module movements can be well explained by the influence factors of the joint movement correlation. Moreover, correlation analysis of joints and modules showed the wrist module had the lowest correlation among all inter-finger and inter-joint modules. Hand and wrist postures were both sufficient to be described by a few principal components. In terms of the PC elements distribution of hand postures, compared with previous investigations, there was a greater proportion of movement in the thumb joints especially the interphalangeal (IP) and opposition rotation (ROT) joint. The research could serve to a complete understanding of hand grasp, and the design, control of the anthropomorphic hand and wrist.

Dataset Information

Independent Long Fingers are not Essential for a Grasping Hand.

Publications

Independent Long Fingers are not Essential for a Grasping Hand.

Similar Datasets

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