Sensorimotor Control Of Grasping

The human hand can take on a huge variety of shapes and functions, providing its owner with a powerful hammer at one time or a delicate pair of forceps at another. The universal utility of the hand is even more enhanced by the ability to amplify the function of the hand by using tools. To understand and appreciate how the human brain controls movements of the hand, it is important to investigate both the healthy motor behaviour and dysfunction during everyday manipulative tasks. This book provides a contemporary summary of the physiology and pathophysiology of the manipulative and exploratory functions of the human hand. With contributions from scientists and clinical researchers of biomechanics, kinesiology, neurophysiology, psychology, physical medicine and rehabilitation, it covers the development of healthy human grasping over the lifespan, the wide spectrum of disability in the pathological state and links basic motor research with modern brain sciences.

Provides a contemporary summary of the physiology and pathophysiology of the manipulative and exploratory functions of the human hand.

This collection of contributions on the subject of the neural mechanisms of sensorimotor control resulted from a conference held in Cairns, Australia, September 3-6, 2001. While the three of us were attending the International Union of Physiological Sciences (IUPS) Congress in St Petersburg, Russia, in 1997, we discussed the implications of the next Congress being awarded to New Zealand. We agreed to organise a satellite to this congress in an area of mutual interest -the neuroscience of movement and sensation. Australia has a long-standing and enviable reputation in the field of neural mechanisms of sensorimotor control. Arguably this reached its peak with the award of a Nobel Prize to Sir John Eccles in 1963 for his work on synaptic transmission in the central nervous system. Since that time, the subject of neuroscience has progressed considerably. One advance is the exploitation of knowledge acquired from animal experiments to studies on conscious human subjects. In this development, Australians have achieved international prominence, particularly in the areas of kinaesthesia and movement control. This bias is evident in the choice of subject matter for the conference and, subsequently, this book. It was also decided to assign a whole section to muscle mechanics, a subject that is often left out altogether from conferences on motor control. Cairns is a lovely city and September is a good time to visit it.

Used for gestures of communication, environmental exploration, and the grasping and manipulating of objects, the hand has a vital role in our lives. The hand's anatomical structure and neural control are among the most complex and detailed of human motor systems. Hand and Brain is a comprehensive overview of the hand's sensorimotor control. It discusses mediating variables in perception and prehension, the coordination of muscles with the central nervous system, the nature of movement control and hand positioning, hand-arm coordination in reaching and grasping, and the sensory function of the hand. In the last decade the rapid growth of neuroscience has been paralleled by a surge of interest in hand function. This reflects the fact that many of the fundamental issues facing neuroscientists today--including the problem of relating physiology to behavior--are central to the study of sensorimotor control of the hand. This book takes a broad interdisciplinary perspective on the control of hand movements that includes neurophysiology, neuroanatomy, psychology and neuropsychology, and biomechanics. The authors, who have all made significant scientific contributions in their own right, have sought to introduce their chosen topics in a manner that the undergraduate reader will be able to follow without sacrificing detailed and up-to-date coverage ofthe major developments. Uses an interdisciplinary approach including behavioral and neurophysiological data Describes a variety of experimental methodologies Treats neural computations necessary for the control of movement Covers implications of biomechanics for control, sensory mechanisms, and perceptual processing (haptics) Includes manipulative hand function as well as reaching Overviews each group of chapters using link sections Contains an integrated index and a glosssary The five sections cover: Mediating variables in perception and prehension The coordination of muscles with the central nervous system The nature of movement control and hand positioning Hand-arm coordination in reaching and grasping The sensory function of the hand

Despite the intensive experimental and theoretical studies for over a century, the general processes involved in neural control of pasture and movement, in learning of motor behaviour in healthy subjects and in adaptation in pathology were and remain a challenging problems for the scientists in the field of sensorimotor control. The book is the outcome of the Advanced Research Workshop Sensorimotor Control, where the focus was on the state and the perspectives of the study in the field.

Tactile Sensing, Skill Learning and Robotic Dexterous Manipulation focuses on cross-disciplinary lines of research and groundbreaking research ideas in three research lines: tactile sensing, skill learning and dexterous control. The book introduces recent work about human dexterous skill representation and learning, along with discussions of tactile sensing and its applications on unknown objects’ property recognition and reconstruction. Sections also introduce the adaptive control schema and its learning by imitation and exploration. Other chapters describe the fundamental part of relevant research, paying attention to the connection among different fields and showing the state-of-the-art in related branches. The book summarizes the different approaches and discusses the pros and cons of each. Chapters not only describe the research but also include basic knowledge that can help readers understand the proposed work, making it an excellent resource for researchers and professionals who work in the robotics industry, haptics and in machine learning. Provides a review of tactile perception and the latest advances in the use of robotic dexterous manipulation Presents the most detailed work on synthesizing intelligent tactile perception, skill learning and adaptive control Introduces recent work on human’s dexterous skill representation and learning and the adaptive control schema and its learning by imitation and exploration Reveals and illustrates how robots can improve dexterity by modern tactile sensing, interactive perception, learning and adaptive control approaches

This book looks at the common problems both human and robotic hands encounter when controlling the large number of joints, actuators and sensors required to efficiently perform motor tasks such as object exploration, manipulation and grasping. The authors adopt an integrated approach to explore the control of the hand based on sensorimotor synergies that can be applied in both neuroscience and robotics. Hand synergies are based on goal-directed, combined muscle and kinematic activation leading to a reduction of the dimensionality of the motor and sensory space, presenting a highly effective solution for the fast and simplified design of artificial systems. Presented in two parts, the first part, Neuroscience, provides the theoretical and experimental foundations to describe the synergistic organization of the human hand. The second part, Robotics, Models and Sensing Tools, exploits the framework of hand synergies to better control and design robotic hands and haptic/sensing systems/tools, using a reduced number of control inputs/sensors, with the goal of pushing their effectiveness close to the natural one. Human and Robot Hands provides a valuable reference for students, researchers and designers who are interested in the study and design of the artificial hand.

This text provides a comprehensive survey of work in visually guided prehension developmental studies of accurate grasping in human infants, and neuropsychological work on praxic control in individuals with brain damage. It examines the following topics: electrohysiological studies of motor and premotor areas in the cerebral cortex, kinematic studies of prehension in normal and neurologically-impaired individuals, and elevtomyographic studies of muscles controlling grasping.