The Influence of External Forces on Wrist Proprioception

Proprioception combines information from cutaneous, joint, tendon, and muscle receptors for maintaining a reliable internal body image. However, it is still a matter of debate, in both neurophysiology and psychology, to what extent such body image is modified or distorted by a changing haptic environment. In particular, what is worth investigating is the contribution of external forces on our perception of body and joint configuration. The proprioceptive acuity of fifteen young participants was tested with a Joint Position Matching (JPM) task, performed with the dominant wrist under five different external forces, in order to understand to what extent they affect proprioceptive acuity. Results show that accuracy and precision in target matching do not change in a significant manner as a function of the loading condition, suggesting that the multi-sensory integration process is indeed capable of discriminating different sub-modalities of proprioception, namely the joint position sense and the sense of force. Furthermore, results indicate a preference for target undershooting when movements are performed in a viscous or high resistive force field, rather than passive or null fields in which subjects did not show any predominance for under/over estimation of their position.