Fig . 1 .-Adjustable prone position head support. Angled front (A) and back (8 ) vi ews demonstrate thumb bolt adjustment of face piece, chin support , and Velc ro straps that assist in maintain ing head in desired position. A large base provides stability and good fric ti onal contact with the x-ray tabletop. C and D demonstrate volunteer's comfortable position . The airway is unobstruc ted an...

The objective of this study was to explore motor impairment of the thumb following stroke. More specifically, we quantitatively examined kinetic deficits of the thumb. We anticipated that force deficits would be nonuniformly distributed across the kinetic workspace, due in part to varying levels of difficulty in altering the motor activation pattern to meet the task. Eighteen stroke survivors w...

In 1930 Foerster described an operation for restoring opposition of the thumb in cases of paralysis of abductor brevis and opponens pollicis ; a bone graft was inserted between the first two metacarpals to maintain the thumb in palmar abduction and opposition. The method was elaborated by Thompson (1942) and the results in seven cases were reviewed. Both authors were satisfied that the function...

Studies suggest that pain may play a major role in determining cortical rearrangements in the adult human somatosensory system. Most studies, however, have been performed under conditions whereby pain coexists with massive deafferentation (e.g., amputations). Moreover, no information is available on whether spinal and brainstem changes contribute to pain-related reorganizational processes in hu...

The Rutgers Master II-ND glove is a haptic interface designed for dextrous interactions with virtual environments. The glove provides force feedback up to 16 N each to the thumb, index, middle, and ring fingertips. It uses custom pneumatic actuators arranged in a direct-drive configuration in the palm. Unlike commercial haptic gloves, the direct-drive actuators make unnecessary cables and pulle...

Humans (Homo sapiens) anticipate the consequences of their forthcoming actions. For example, they grasp objects with uncomfortable grasps to afford comfortable end positions-the end-state comfort (ESC) effect. When did such sophisticated motor planning abilities emerge in evolution? We addressed this question by asking whether humans' most distant living primate relatives-lemurs-also exhibit th...

this paper presents a stable new algorithm for force/position control in robot manipulators. in this algorithm, position vectors are measured by sensors and then used in the control law. since using force sensor has some issues such as high costs and technical problems, an approach is presented to overcome these issues. in this respect, force sensor is replaced by an adaptive fuzzy estimator to...

The present study aimed to elucidate whether the type of feedback influences the performance and the motor cortical activity when executing identical visuomotor tasks. For this purpose, time to task failure was measured during position- and force-controlled muscular contractions. Subjects received either visual feedback about the force produced by pressing a force transducer or about the actual...

PURPOSE Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) impairs the performance of fine motor tasks of the hand, leading to clumsiness. Precision pinch by the thumb and index finger is a frequent task that requires the fine control of each digit as well as the coordination of the 2 digits. The purpose of this study was to examine the performance of precision pinch movements impaired by CTS. METHODS Sixteen CTS ...

We distinguish between two models of adult cortical reorganization, adaptive and constant somatotopy, using functional magnetic resonance imaging maps corresponding to individual thumb and fourth-finger digits in a patient with a right-hand fourth digit tendon transfer that salvaged impaired function of the right thumb. Comparison of motor and sensory maps for both digits and both hands was con...