Interaction between Finger Force and Neural Command in Multi-Finger Force Production

Abstract

In this study, we investigated the relationship between the finger force and the neural command in multi-finger force production tasks in order to characterize the neural enslaving effect and the force-deficit effect among fingers. Seven healthy male subjects were instructed to press one, two, three and four fingers on the finger sensors as hard as possible acting in parallel in all possible combinations. Then, the finger forces in each task were recorded and analyzed to represent the neural enslaving effect and the force-deficit effect. The results confirmed that individual finger forces were smaller in multi-finger maximal voluntary contraction tasks than in single-finger tasks. The force deficit effect increased with the number of fingers involved. A mathematical model proposed in this paper based on the experimental results could explicitly describe the two effects of finger interaction by representing the relationship between the neural commands and finger forces. The present results could be useful information to understand the basic neuro-muscular mechanism in hand biomechanics and the fundamentals of intelligent hand robots.