Characteristics of physiological tremor in five fingers and evaluations of fatigue of fingers in typing.

Abstract

Physiological tremor, which is the invisible mechanical vibration of body part, was measured for five fingers. It was obtained that the power spectrum always has two peaks at 10 and 25Hz for each of the five fingers. The peaks were considered to be generated in the following two loop systems: The component of the lower frequency originated from the central nervous system as a long loop, and that of the higher frequency originated from the muscle-spine loop system as a short loop. The total power, which was the sum of power spectra ranging from 1.5 to 50Hz, was defined as an evaluation index, and it showed characteristic results for the five fingers. The muscular load produced by two hours of typing work was responsible mainly for the increase of total power and for the change of peak frequencies. The mechanism for the change of the power spectrum due to muscular load was well explained by the two-loop theory. It was found that the fatigue of the fingers due to muscular load could be evaluated by the total power.