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Multi-finger synergies and the muscular apparatus of the hand

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Abstract

We explored whether the synergic control of the hand during multi-finger force production tasks depends on the hand muscles involved. Healthy subjects performed accurate force production tasks and targeted force pulses while pressing against loops positioned at the level of fingertips, middle phalanges, and proximal phalanges. This varied the involvement of the extrinsic and intrinsic finger flexors. The framework of the uncontrolled manifold (UCM) hypothesis was used to analyze the structure of inter-trial variance, motor equivalence, and anticipatory synergy adjustments prior to the force pulse in the spaces of finger forces and finger modes (hypothetical finger-specific control signals). Subjects showed larger maximal force magnitudes at the proximal site of force production. There were synergies stabilizing total force during steady-state phases across all three sites of force production; no differences were seen across the sites in indices of structure of variance, motor equivalence, or anticipatory synergy adjustments. Indices of variance, which did not affect the task (within the UCM), correlated with motor equivalent motion between the steady states prior to and after the force pulse; in contrast, variance affecting task performance did not correlate with non-motor equivalent motion. The observations are discussed within the framework of hierarchical control with referent coordinates for salient effectors at each level. The findings suggest that multi-finger synergies are defined at the level of abundant transformation between the low-dimensional hand level and higher dimensional finger level while being relatively immune to transformations between the finger level and muscle level. The results also support the scheme of control with two classes of neural variables that define referent coordinates and gains in back-coupling loops between hierarchical control levels.

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Acknowledgements

The study was in part supported by NIH grant NS095873.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Kinesiology, The Pennsylvania State University, Rec.Hall-267, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Cristian Cuadra, Sasha Reschechtko & Mark L. Latash

  2. Escuela Kinesiología, Facultad de Ciencias de la Rehabilitación, Universidad Andres Bello, Calle Quillota 980, Viña del Mar, Chile

    Cristian Cuadra

  3. Escuela Kinesiología, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Valparaíso, Valparaiso, Chile

    Angelo Bartsch

  4. Escuela Kinesiología, Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad de Viña del Mar, Agua Santa 7075 Rodelillo, Viña del Mar, Chile

    Paula Tiemann

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  1. Cristian Cuadra
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  4. Sasha Reschechtko
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  5. Mark L. Latash
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Correspondence to Mark L. Latash.

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Cuadra, C., Bartsch, A., Tiemann, P. et al. Multi-finger synergies and the muscular apparatus of the hand. Exp Brain Res 236, 1383–1393 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-018-5231-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-018-5231-5

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