Maximum Grip Aperture Research Articles

Grip Aperture Scaling to Object Size in Chronic Stroke

Decreased dexterity in chronic stroke survivors results in diminished hand use and impacts quality of life. We studied reach-and-grasp coordination and aperture scaling during reach to grasp using different grasp types and object sizes (33-55 mm). Chronic stroke survivors with hand paresis and controls grasped cylinders with the whole hand or fingertips. Three stroke subjects with more severe hand paresis had disrupted reach/ grasp coordination and used compensatory strategies for arm transport and/or grasping. Nine stroke subjects with less severe paresis scaled aperture to cylinder diameter (p < .001) but had slower movements, used excessive trunk movement, and had prolonged deceleration times. Relative time to maximal grip aperture (TMA) occurred earlier in stroke subjects and in both groups when grasping the small cylinder (p < .002). Despite deficits in reach and grasp, chronic stroke survivors with mild to moderate hand paresis may retain grip aperture scaling to object size for different grasp types.

Consistent haptic feedback is required but it is not enough for natural reaching to virtual cylinders

In virtual reality it is easy to control the visual cues that tell us about an object’s shape. However, it is much harder to provide realistic virtual haptic feedback when grasping virtual objects. In this study we examined the role of haptic feedback when grasping (virtual) cylinders with an elliptical circumference. In Experiment 1 we placed the same circular cylinder at the simulated location of virtual elliptical cylinders of varying shape, so that the haptic feedback did not change when the visually specified shape changed. We found that the scaling of maximum grip aperture with the diameter of the nearest principal axis (.14±.04) was much weaker than when grasping real cylinders (.54±.04, Cuijpers, Brenner, & Smeets, 2006 Grasping reveals visual misjudgements of shape. Experimental Brain Research, 175, 32-44). For the scaling of grip orientation with the orientation of the cylinder we found large individual differences: the range is .07−.82 (average .42±.07) as compared to .55−.79 (average .67±.03) for grasping real cylinders. In Experiment 2 we provided consistent haptic feedback by placing real cylinders that matched the location, shape and orientation of the virtual cylinders. The scaling gains of both maximum grip aperture (.39±.04) and grip orientation (.56±.08) were substantially higher than in Experiment 1, but still lower than for grasps to real cylinders. The variability between participants for the scaling of grip orientation was also much reduced. These results showed that although haptic feedback must be consistent with visual information, it is not sufficient for natural prehension. We discuss the implications of these findings in terms of the integration of visual information with haptic feedback.

Memory mechanisms in grasping

The availability of visual information influences the execution of goal-directed movements. This is very prominent in memory conditions, where a delay is introduced between stimulus presentation and execution of the movement. The corresponding effects could be due to a decay of the visual information or to different processing mechanisms used for movements directed at visible (dorsal stream) and remembered (ventral stream) objects as proposed by the two visual systems hypothesis. In three experiments, the authors investigated grasping under full vision and three different delay conditions with increasing memory demands. Results indicate that the visuomotor information used for grasping decays rapidly. No evidence was found for qualitative changes in movement kinematics and the use of different representations for visually guided and memory guided movements. Findings rather suggest that delayed grasping is similar to grasping directed to larger objects under full vision. Therefore, the authors propose that grasping after a delay is guided by classic memory mechanisms and that this is reflected in an increasing maximum grip aperture in grasping.

Prediction of object contact during grasping

The maximum grip aperture (MGA) during prehension is linearly related to the size of objects to be grasped and is adapted to the haptically sensed object size when there is a discrepancy between visual and haptic information. We have investigated what information is used to drive this adaptation process and how the onset of fingertip forces on the object is triggered. Subjects performed a reach-to-grasp task, where the object seen and the object grasped physically never were the same. We measured the movements of the index finger and the thumb and the contact forces between each fingertip and the object. The subjects' adaptation of the MGA was unrelated both to different fingertip velocities at the moment of object contact, or the fingertip forces. Instead, the 'timing' of contact between the fingers and the object was most consistently influenced by introducing a size discrepancy. Specifically, if the object was larger than expected, the moment of contact occurred earlier, and if the object was decreased in size, then the contact occurred later. During adaptation, these timing differences were markedly reduced. Also, the motor command for applying forces on the object seemed to be released in anticipation of the predicted moment of contact. We therefore conclude that the CNS dynamically predicts when contact between the fingertips and objects occur and that aperture adaptation is primarily driven by timing prediction errors.

Coordination Between Reaching and Grasping in Patients With Hemiparesis and Healthy Subjects

van Vliet PM, Sheridan MR. Coordination between reaching and grasping in patients with hemiparesis and healthy subjects. Objective To investigate the coordination of reach-to-grasp components in hemiparetic and healthy subjects. Design Split-plot repeated-measures design with 3 factors (group, object size, movement speed). Setting Movement laboratory. Participants Twelve hemiparetic and 12 age-matched healthy subjects. Interventions Not applicable. Main Outcome Measures We used motion analysis to collect information on the kinematic variables of movement duration, peak velocity, peak deceleration, and maximum aperture, and the time of peak velocity, peak deceleration, and maximum aperture expressed as a percentage of movement duration during 32 reaching movements by each subject. We examined the coordination between the 2 components in 2 ways. First, we investigated the correlation between time of hand opening and start of hand transport, and between time of maximum aperture and time of peak deceleration. Second, we compared movements at preferred and fast speeds (manipulation of transport component) and to 2 different-sized cups (manipulation of grasp component). Results Both groups demonstrated a temporal coupling between grasp and transport components at the start of the reach and at the time of maximum aperture. Both groups increased the aperture of grasp for larger cups and increased the maximum grip aperture, and had a shorter deceleration phase for faster movements. The deceleration phase of the hemiparetic patients was longer than that of the healthy subjects, however, and the components were not as tightly coupled. Conclusions The hemiparetic patients, who had a moderate amount of functional recovery, were similar to healthy subjects in their ability to control reach-to-grasp components. Their performance was not as skilled, however.

Reaching and grasping with restricted peripheral vision

To investigate how prehensile movements, such as reaching and grasping, are affected by different fields of view when both haptic and visual information are available. Ten volunteers with normal vision (mean age 24.5 years) participated. Subjects picked up an object with a full monocular field of view (FOV) and with two different sizes of pinholes which simulated a central FOV of 23 degrees and 11 degrees respectively. The Vicon motion analysis system was used to record and reconstruct the 3D-kinematic data. The kinematic parameters measured were total time of the movement, maximum velocity, time to maximum velocity, deceleration time, maximum grip aperture, time to maximum grip aperture and time taken after maximum grip aperture. Restricting the FOV affected both the transport and grasp components of the movement. The maximum velocity decreased (p = 0.008) and the maximum grip aperture increased (p = 0.003) with both restricted FOV when compared with the full field. The execution or on-line control of both reach and grasp components were also longer (p = 0.005 and p = 0.002 respectively) for the 11 degrees FOV only. Reducing the FOV to 11 degrees (an absence of peripheral vision) affects the planning and execution of the reach and the grasp component of the movement. Restricting the FOV to 23 degrees of central vision (with some peripheral cues present) affects only the planning of the reach and grasp component of the movement. Peripheral visual cues are therefore more important for the on-line control than for the planning of the movement. The findings of this study have important clinical implications in patients who suffer from ocular diseases in which peripheral vision gradually decreases.

Impact of Coordinate Transformation Uncertainty on Human Sensorimotor Control

Humans build representations of objects and their locations by integrating imperfect information from multiple perceptual modalities (e.g., visual, haptic). Because sensory information is specified in different frames of reference (i.e., eye- and body-centered), it must be remapped into a common coordinate frame before integration and storage in memory. Such transformations require an understanding of body articulation, which is estimated through noisy sensory data. Consequently, target information acquires additional coordinate transformation uncertainty (CTU) during remapping because of errors in joint angle sensing. As a result, CTU creates differences in the reliability of target information depending on the reference frame used for storage. This paper explores whether the brain represents and compensates for CTU when making grasping movements. To address this question, we varied eye position in the head, while participants reached to grasp a spatially fixed object, both when the object was in view and when it was occluded. Varying eye position changes CTU between eye and head, producing additional uncertainty in remapped information away from forward view. The results showed that people adjust their maximum grip aperture to compensate both for changes in visual information and for changes in CTU when the target is occluded. Moreover, the amount of compensation is predicted by a Bayesian model for location inference that uses eye-centered storage.

AGING EFFECT ON MOVEMENT OF PREHENSION WITH OBSTACLE

In this paper, we develop an animal model of prehension movements by examining the kinematics of reaching and grasping in monkeys and by comparing the results to published data on humans. Hand movements were recorded in three dimensions in monkeys who were trained to either point at visual targets under unperturbed and perturbed conditions, or to reach and grasp 3-D objects. The results revealed the following three similarities in the hand kinematics of monkey and man. (1) Pointing movements showed an asymmetry depending on target location relative to the hand used; in particular, movements to an ipsilateral target took longer than those to a contralateral one. (2) Perturbation of target location decreased the magnitude of the velocity peak and increased the duration of pointing movements. (3) Reaching to grasp movements displayed a bell-shaped wrist velocity profile and the maximum grip aperture was correlated with object size. These similarities indicate that the macaque monkey can be a useful model for understanding human motor control.

Getting a grip on numbers: Numerical magnitude priming in object grasping.

To investigate the functional connection between numerical cognition and action planning, the authors required participants to perform different grasping responses depending on the parity status of Arabic digits. The results show that precision grip actions were initiated faster in response to small numbers, whereas power grips were initiated faster in response to large numbers. Moreover, analyses of the grasping kinematics reveal an enlarged maximum grip aperture in the presence of large numbers. Reaction time effects remained present when controlling for the number of fingers used while grasping but disappeared when participants pointed to the object. The data indicate a priming of size-related motor features by numerals and support the idea that representations of numbers and actions share common cognitive codes within a generalized magnitude system.

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Interference of grasping observation during prehension, a behavioural study

During the last 10 years a considerable number of neurophysiological and functional imaging studies have provided evidence that observation and execution of movements activate common representations. Furthermore, several behavioural studies suggest that action observation can influence the performance of movements. Recently it was shown that viewing incongruent movements interferes with the execution of non-object oriented sinusoidal arm movements (Kil-ner et al. in Curr Biol 13:522-525, 2003). In the current study, we investigated whether interference of action observation also occurs during goal-directed prehension movements. Participants were required to grasp cubes of different sizes while simultaneously observing an actor performing grasping or pointing movements. The actors' movement could be directed at objects that were identical, or different in size to the cube grasped by the participant. The results showed that maximum grip aperture was affected by observation of grasping towards larger objects. No effect of object size was found during observation of pointing movements. These results suggest that observation of grasping movements can interfere with the on-line control of prehension movements and provides further evidence for overlapping networks for grasping observation and execution.

Grasping reveals visual misjudgements of shape

There are many conditions in which the visually perceived shape of an object differs from its true shape. We here show that one can reveal such errors by studying grasping. Nine subjects were asked to grasp and lift elliptical cylinders that were placed vertically at eye height. We varied the cylinder's aspect ratios, orientations about the vertical axis and distances from the subject. We found that the subjects' grip orientations deviated systematically from the orientations that would give the mechanically optimal grip. That this is largely due to misjudging the cylinder's shape (rather than to selecting a comfortable posture) follows from the fact that the grip aperture was initially more strongly correlated with the maximal grip aperture (which is related to the expected contact positions) than with the final grip aperture (which is determined by the real contact positions). The correlation with the maximal grip aperture drops from 0.8 to 0.6 in the last 1% of the traversed distance (11% of movement time), showing that the grip aperture was anticipated incorrectly (it is automatically "corrected" at contact). The grip orientation was already strongly correlated with the grip orientation at the time of maximal grip aperture, half way through the movement (R > or = 0.7), showing that the suboptimal grip orientations were planned that way. We conclude that subjects plan their grasps using information that is based on the misperceived shape.

Acquiring and adapting a novel audiomotor map in human grasping

For sensorimotor transformations to be executed accurately, there must be mechanisms that can both establish and modify mappings between sensory and motor coordinates. Such mechanisms were investigated in normal subjects using a reach-to-grasp task. First, we replaced the normal input of visual information about object size with auditory information, i.e., we attempted to establish an 'audiomotor map'. The size of the object was log linearly related to the frequency of the sound, and we measured the maximum grip aperture (MGA) during the reaching phase to determine if the subjects had learned the relationship. Second, we changed the frequency-object size relationship to study adaptation in the newly acquired map. Our results demonstrate that learning of an audiomotor map consisted of three distinct phases: during the first stage (approximately 10-15 trials) subjects simply used MGAs large enough to grasp any reasonably sized object and there were no overt signs of learning. During the second stage, there was a period of fast learning where the slope of the relationship between MGA and object size became steeper until the third stage where the slope was constant. In contrast, when sensorimotor adaptation was studied in the established audiomotor map, there was rapid learning from the start of a size perturbation. We conclude that different learning strategies are employed when sensorimotor transformations are established compared to when existing transformations are modified.

Prehension movements in a patient (AC) with posterior parietal cortex damage and posterior callosal section

Prehension movements of the right hand were recorded in a right-handed man (AC), with an injury to the left posterior parietal cortex (PPC) and with a section of the left half of the splenium. The kinematic analysis of AC’s grasping movements in direct and perturbed conditions was compared to that of five control subjects. A novel effect in prehension was revealed—a hemispace effect—in healthy controls only. Movements to the left hemispace were faster, longer, and with a smaller grasp aperture; perturbation of both object position and distance resulted in the attenuation of the direction effect on movement time and the time to velocity peak, with a reverse pattern in the time to maximum grip aperture. Nevertheless, the correlation between transport velocity amplitude and grasp aperture remained stable in both perturbed and non-perturbed movements, reflecting the coordination between reaching and grasping in control subjects. In contrast, transport and grasp, as well as their coordination in both direct and perturbed conditions, were negatively affected by the PPC and splenium lesion in AC, suggesting that transport and grasp rely on two functionally identifiable subsystems.

How does unilateral visual loss affect motor responses of reaching and grasping?

Skilled and accurate hand movements are required in order to reach and grasp a cup. The movements are analysed under the ‘transport’ and ‘grasp’ mechanisms. We investigated whether a decrease in vision of one eye to create unequal vision during binocular viewing affects reaching and grasping hand movements compared to monocular viewing. Unequal vision was simulated using a +6.00 DS blurring lens. Subjects picked up a cup placed at two different distances. Two different cup sizes were used. Measurements were carried out under binocular, monocular and unequal binocular conditions. Hand movements were analysed using a 6 infra-red camera system. Prehensile indices measured were maximum velocity, time to maximum velocity, time to maximum grasp, total time and maximum grip aperture. Binocular performance with bin (equal) and bin (unequal) were compared to the ‘best’ monocular (mon) performance. Under bin (equal) the grasp component was significantly smaller than under monocular viewing, showing uncertainty under monocular conditions. In the bin (unequal) condition, the grasp component was significantly larger than monocular, showing worse performance compared to monocular. Maximum velocity showed a similar effect. Bin (equal) and mon conditions were similar. Maximum velocity under bin (unequal) was significantly lower than the monocular condition. These data demonstrate that a monocular visual impairment affects binocular performance for reaching and grasping to an extent that it becomes worse than the performance of the good eye alone. These data have implications for patients with a visual impairment in one eye, or in whom one eye deteriorates faster than the other.

Short-term plasticity of the visuomotor map during grasping movements in humans

During visually guided grasping movements, visual information is transformed into motor commands. This transformation is known as the "visuomotor map." To investigate limitations in the short-term plasticity of the visuomotor map in normal humans, we studied the maximum grip aperture (MGA) during the reaching phase while subjects grasped objects of various sizes. The objects seen and the objects grasped were physically never the same. When a discrepancy had been introduced between the size of the visual and the grasped objects, and the subjects were fully adapted to it, they all readily interpolated and extrapolated the MGA to objects not included in training trials. In contrast, when the subjects were exposed to discrepancies that required a slope change in the visuomotor map, they were unable to adapt adequately. They instead retained a subject-specific slope of the relationship between the visual size and MGA. We conclude from these results that during reaching for grasping, normal subjects are unable to abandon a straight linear function determining the relationship between visual object size and MGA. Moreover, the plasticity of the visuomotor map is, at least in short term, constrained to allow only offset changes, that is, only "rigid shifts" are possible between the visual and motor coordinate systems.

Psychophysical Test for the Independence of Perception and Action.

Research has suggested that perception and action are independent (see M. A. Goodale & A. Haffenden, 1998). The authors used the Ebbinghaus illusion to test this hypothesis in 2 experiments. Verbal reports of perceived size were compared with maximum grip aperture during grasping (Experiment 1) and manual reports of perceived size (Experiment 2). A multidimensional signal detection analysis was used to distinguish among the possible interactions between the two processes in each experiment (H. Kadlec & J. T. Townsend, 1992a, 1992b). In Experiment 1, the percepts were independent, and there were no interactions between processes for verbal and visuomotor responses. In Experiment 2, the percepts associated with verbal and manual reports were independent, but the processes interacted at the levels of the stimulus information and the decision rules used to transform each percept into a response.

Representational momentum in perception and grasping: translating versus transforming objects.

Representational momentum is the tendency to misremember the stopping point of a moving object as further forward in the direction of movement. Results of several studies suggest that this effect is typical for changes in position (e.g., translation) and not for changes in object shape (transformation). Additionally, the effect seems to be stronger in motor tasks than in perceptual tasks. Here, participants judged the final distance between two spheres after this distance had been increasing or decreasing. The spheres were two separately translating objects or were connected to form a single transforming object (a dumbbell). Participants also performed a motor task in which they grasped virtual versions of the final objects. We found representational momentum for the visual judgment task for both stimulus types. As predicted, it was stronger for the spheres than for the dumbbells. In contrast, for grasping, only the dumbbells produced representational momentum (larger maximum grip aperture when the dumbbells had been growing compared to when they had been shrinking). Because type of stimulus change had these different effects on representational momentum for perception and action, we conclude that different sources of information are used in the two tasks or that they are governed by different mechanisms.

The role of sight of the hand in the development of prehension in childhood.

In two studies, children between 5 and 10 years of age were asked to reach to grasp an object without sight of the hand during the movement. The oldest children and adults were faster when they could see the hand and increased maximum grip aperture when they could not see the hand. The 10-year-olds were less able to integrate grasp and lift than adults when they could see their hands. Children aged 5 and 6 showed no increase in movement time when they could not see the hand and did not adapt maximum grip aperture to lack of sight. These effects remained when children were encouraged to reach for and lift the target as quickly as possible. The results indicate that younger children did not give preference to vision in the control of prehension, while older children used visual feedback to improve efficiency. Dependence on sight of the hand for the control of prehension does not simply decrease with age, but it may be integrated into an anticipatory control strategy where it contributes to the efficiency of control.

On the relation between object shape and grasping kinematics.

Despite the many studies on the visual control of grasping, little is known about how and when small variations in shape affect grasping kinematics. In the present study we asked subjects to grasp elliptical cylinders that were placed 30 and 60 cm in front of them. The cylinders' aspect ratio was varied systematically between 0.4 and 1.6, and their orientation was varied in steps of 30 degrees. Subjects picked up all noncircular cylinders with a hand orientation that approximately coincided with one of the principal axes. The probability of selecting a given principal axis was the highest when its orientation was equal to the preferred orientation for picking up a circular cylinder at the same location. The maximum grip aperture was scaled to the length of the selected principal axis, but the maximum grip aperture was also larger when the length of the axis orthogonal to the grip axis was longer than that of the grip axis. The correlation between the grip aperture--or the hand orientation--at a given instant, and its final value, increased monotonically with the traversed distance. The final hand orientation could already be inferred from its value after 30% of the movement distance with a reliability that explains 50% of the variance. For the final grip aperture, this was only so after 80% of the movement distance. The results indicate that the perceived shape of the cylinder is used for selecting appropriate grasping locations before or early in the movement and that the grip aperture and orientation are gradually attuned to these locations during the movement.