Effects of task complexity on grip-to-load coordination in bimanual actions

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 within- and between-hand force coordination. Evidence of task-specific 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.