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Related Experiment Videos

Postural hand synergies for tool use

M Santello1, M Flanders, J F Soechting

  • 1Neuroscience Department, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA.

The Journal of Neuroscience : the Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience
|November 21, 1998
PubMed
Summary
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Human hand posture involves a few key postural synergies for general shaping, with finer control for subtle adjustments. These synergies appear independent of grip force control during object manipulation.

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Biomechanics
  • Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

  • The human hand exhibits remarkable dexterity, capable of forming diverse grips for object manipulation.
  • Understanding the underlying control mechanisms of hand posture is crucial for fields like robotics and rehabilitation.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the degrees of freedom in human hand posture during object grasping.
  • To identify the principal components governing hand shaping for various objects.
  • To explore the relationship between hand posture control and grip force regulation.

Main Methods:

  • Subjects shaped their right hand to grasp a variety of familiar objects.
  • 15 joint angles of the fingers and thumb were recorded to measure static hand posture.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Principal components analysis (PCA) was used to analyze the joint angle data.

    • Main Results:

    • Distinct hand shapes were adopted for different objects, but joint angles did not vary independently.
    • The first two principal components accounted for over 80% of the variance in hand posture.
    • Higher-order principal components provided object-specific information, indicating subtle control adjustments.

    Conclusions:

    • Hand posture control relies on a limited number of postural synergies for general shaping, supplemented by fine-tuning mechanisms.
    • Postural synergies do not directly map to established grip taxonomies.
    • Hand posture regulation may be independent of the control of contact forces used in grasping.