Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 11, 2025
Efficiently Recording the Eye-Hand Coordination to Incoordination Spectrum
Published on: March 21, 2019
Developmental and acquired brain injury have opposite effects on finger coordination in children
Aviva Mimouni-Bloch1,2, Sharon Shaklai2,3, Moran Levin4
1Pediatric Neurology and Development Unit, Loewenstein Rehabilitation Medical Center, Ra'anana, Israel.
Insights
Children with cerebral palsy (CP) and traumatic brain injury (TBI) show impaired finger coordination. While CP may involve compensatory strategies, TBI leads to age-related performance decline in children.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Pediatrics
- Rehabilitation Science
Background:
- Dexterous finger coordination develops throughout childhood.
- Brain injuries, such as cerebral palsy (CP) and traumatic brain injury (TBI), can disrupt this developmental process.
- Understanding finger coordination deficits is crucial for therapeutic interventions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare finger coordination in children with CP and TBI to typically developing children.
- To investigate the impact of age on finger coordination in these groups.
- To explore potential differences in compensatory strategies between CP and TBI.
Main Methods:
- An isometric pressing task was used to assess finger coordination in children aged 4-12.
- Functional tests included the Jebsen Taylor test of hand function and the Box and Block test.
- The uncontrolled manifold hypothesis was applied to analyze the synergy index, measuring motor variability.
Main Results:
- Children with CP and TBI demonstrated deficits in functional tests and the pressing task compared to controls.
- Children with CP exhibited increased motor variability but a similar synergy index to controls, suggesting compensation.
- Children with TBI showed age-dependent performance decline, with older children performing worse.
Conclusions:
- Finger coordination impairments differ between CP and TBI in children.
- CP may involve the development of compensatory motor strategies.
- TBI appears to have a more detrimental, age-related impact on finger coordination development.
Abstract:
The ability to coordinate finger forces to dexterously perform tasks develops in children as they grow older. Following brain injury, either developmental (as in cerebral palsy-CP) or acquired (as in traumatic brain injury-TBI), this developmental trajectory will likely be impaired. In this study, we compared finger coordination in a group of children aged 4-12 with CP and TBI to a group of typically developing children using an isometric pressing task. As expected, deficits were observed in functional tests (Jebsen Taylor test of hand function, Box and Block test) for both groups, and children in both groups performed the pressing task less well than the control group. However, differing results were observed between the CP and TBI groups when using the uncontrolled manifold hypothesis to look at the synergy index. This index measures the relative amount of "good" (does not affect the outcome measure) and "bad" (does affect the outcome measure) variability, where in this case the outcome measure is the total force produced by the fingers. While children with CP were more variable in their performance, their synergy index was not significantly different from typically developing children, suggesting the development of compensatory strategies. In contrast, the children following TBI showed performance that got worse as a function of age (i.e., the older children with TBI performed worse than the younger children with TBI). These differences between the groups may be a result of different areas of brain injury typically observed in CP and TBI, and the different amount of time that has passed since the injury.
