Britten, L orcid.org/0000-0002-1010-5135, Coats, RO orcid.org/0000-0003-4415-408X, Ichiyama, RM orcid.org/0000-0002-7640-8032 et al. (3 more authors) (2018) The effect of task symmetry on bimanual reach-to-grasp movements after cervical spinal cord injury. Experimental Brain Research, 236 (11). pp. 3101-3111. ISSN 0014-4819
Abstract
Injury to the cervical spinal cord results in deficits in bimanual control, reducing functional independence and quality of life. Despite this, little research has investigated the control strategies which underpin bimanual arm/hand movements following cervical spinal cord injury (cSCI). Using kinematics and surface electromyography this study explored how task symmetry affects bimanual control, in patients with an acute cSCI (<6m post injury), as they performed naturalistic bimanual reach-to-grasp actions (to objects at 50% and 70% of their maximal reach distance), and how this differs compared to uninjured age matched controls. Twelve adults with a cSCI (mean age 69.25 years), with lesions at C3-C8, categorized by the American Spinal Injury Impairment Scale (AIS) at C or D and 12 uninjured age matched controls (AMC) (mean age 69.29 years) were recruited. Participants with a cSCI produced reach-to-grasp actions which took longer, were slower, less smooth and had longer deceleration phases than AMC (p<0.05). Participants with a cSCI were less synchronous than AMC at peak velocity and just prior to object pick up (p<0.05), but both groups ended the movement in a synchronous fashion. Peak muscle activity occurred just prior to object pick up for both groups. While there seems to be a greater reliance on the deceleration phase of the movement, we observed minimal disruption of the more impaired limb on the less impaired limb and no additional effects of task symmetry on bimanual control. Further research is needed to determine how to take advantage of this retained bimanual control in therapy.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
Keywords: | Spinal Cord Injury; Bimanual control; Reaching; Grasping |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Biological Sciences (Leeds) > School of Biomedical Sciences (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Psychology (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 15 Aug 2018 10:02 |
Last Modified: | 30 May 2023 22:22 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Berlin Heidelberg |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s00221-018-5354-8 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:134534 |
Download
Filename: Britten2018_Article_TheEffectOfTaskSymmetryOnBiman.pdf
Licence: CC-BY 4.0