Publications and Research
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-17-2019
Abstract
The present study examined the effects of selective digital deafferentation on the multi-finger synergies as a function of total force requirement and the number of digits involved in isometric pressing. 12 healthy adults participated in maximal and sub-maximal isometric pressing tasks with or without digital anesthesia to selective digits from the right hand. Our results indicate that selective anesthesia paradigm induces changes in both anesthetized (local) and non-anesthetized (non-local) digits’ performance, including: (1) decreased maximal force abilities in both local and non-local digits; (2) reduced force share during multi-finger tasks from non-local but not local digits; (3) decreased force error-making; and (4) marginally increased motor synergies. These results reinforce the contribution of somatosensory feedback in the process of maximal voluntary contraction force, motor performance, and indicate that somatosensation may play a role in optimizing secondary goals during isometric force production rather than ensuring task performance.
Comments
This work was originally published in PLoS ONE available at https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0226596
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.