Coordination of prehensile forces during precision grip in Huntington's disease

The present study examined the coordination of prehensile forces during precision grip in subjects with Huntington's disease (HD). Fingertip forces were measured in 12 subjects with HD and 12 age-matched controls during the lifting of an instrumented object whose weight and surface texture were varied. The results indicate that subjects with HD have impaired initiation and delayed transitions between movement sequences and produce excessive and variable forces. However, subjects with HD demonstrated anticipatory scaling of force development based on the object's expected physical properties (planning) and adjustment of the force to the object's actual physical properties (sensorimotor integration). The observed findings generally were unrelated to the overall disease severity. However, the variability in forces was correlated with functional capacity and motor performance suggesting that variability is a key feature of the motor deficit. These results provide insights into the impaired hand function observed in individuals with HD.