Experimental Brain Research

, Volume 188, Issue 2, pp 223–236 | Cite as

The statistics of natural hand movements

  • James N. Ingram
  • Konrad P. Körding
  • Ian S. Howard
  • Daniel M. Wolpert
Research Article
First Online:
Received:
Accepted:

Abstract

Humans constantly use their hands to interact with the environment and they engage spontaneously in a wide variety of manual activities during everyday life. In contrast, laboratory-based studies of hand function have used a limited range of predefined tasks. The natural movements made by the hand during everyday life have thus received little attention. Here, we developed a portable recording device that can be worn by subjects to track movements of their right hand as they go about their daily routine outside of a laboratory setting. We analyse the kinematic data using various statistical methods. Principal component analysis of the joint angular velocities showed that the first two components were highly conserved across subjects, explained 60% of the variance and were qualitatively similar to those reported in previous studies of reach-to-grasp movements. To examine the independence of the digits, we developed a measure based on the degree to which the movements of each digit could be linearly predicted from the movements of the other four digits. Our independence measure was highly correlated with results from previous studies of the hand, including the estimated size of the digit representations in primary motor cortex and other laboratory measures of digit individuation. Specifically, the thumb was found to be the most independent of the digits and the index finger was the most independent of the fingers. These results support and extend laboratory-based studies of the human hand.

Keywords

Human hand Digit independence Dimensionality of hand movements Movement statistics 
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access

Notes

Acknowledgments

We thank Roger Lemon for useful comments on an early version of the manuscript. GRANTS: This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust and the Human Frontiers Science Program.

References

  1. Aoki T, Francis PR, Kinoshita H (2003) Differences in the abilities of individual fingers during the performance of fast, repetitive tapping movements. Exp Brain Res 152:270–280PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  2. Beisteiner R, Windischberger C, Lanzenberger R, Edward V, Cunnington R, Erdler M, Gartus A, Strebil B, Moser E, Deecke L (2001) Finger somatotopy in human motor cortex. Neuroimage 13:1016–1026PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  3. Brochier T, Spinks R, Umilta MA, Lemon RN (2004) Patterns of muscle activity underlying object-specific grasp by the macaque monkey. J Neurophysiol 92:1770–1782PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  4. d’Avella A, Portone A, Fernandez L, Lacquaniti F (2006) Control of fast-reaching movements by muscle synergy combinations. J Neurosci 26:7791–7810PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  5. Häger-Ross C, Schieber MH (2000) Quantifying the indepedence of human finger movements: comparisons of digits, hands, and movement frequencies. J Neurosci 20:8542–8550PubMedGoogle Scholar
  6. Imaeda T, An K-N, Cooney WP (1992) Functional anatomy and biomechanics of the thumb. Hand Clin 8:9–15PubMedGoogle Scholar
  7. Indovina I, Jerome NS (2001) On somatotopic representation centres for finger movements in human primary motor cortex and supplementary motor area. Neuroimage 13:1027–1034PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  8. Jones LA (1997) Dextrous hands: human, prosthetic, and robotic. Presence 6:29–56PubMedGoogle Scholar
  9. Jones LA, Lederman SJ (2006) Human hand function. Oxford University Press, OxfordGoogle Scholar
  10. Kilbreath SL, Gandevia SC (1994) Limited independent flexion of the thumb and fingers in human subjects. J Physiol 479:487–497PubMedGoogle Scholar
  11. Kim JS (2001) Predominant involvement of a particular group of fingers due to small, cortical infarction. Neurology 56:1677–1682PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  12. Kleinschmidt A, Nitschke MF, Frahm J (1997) Somatotopy in the human motor cortex hand area. A high-resolution functional MRI study. Eur J Neurosci 9:2178–2186PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  13. Körding KP, Kayser C, Einhauser W, Konig P (2004) How are complex cell properties adapted to the statistics of natural stimuli? J Neurophysiol 91:206–212PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  14. Lang CE, Schieber MH (2003) Differential impairment of individuated finger movements in humans after damage to the motor cortex or the corticospinal tract. J Neurophysiol 90:1160–1170PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  15. Lang CE, Schieber MH (2004) Human finger independence: limitations due to passive mechanical coupling versus active neuromuscular control. J Neurophysiol 92:2802–2810PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  16. Lemon RN (1993) Cortical control of the primate hand. Exp Physiol 78:263–301PubMedGoogle Scholar
  17. Lemon RN (1997) Mechanisms of cortical control of hand function. Neuroscientist 3:389–398CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  18. MacKenzie CL, Iberal T (1994) The grasping hand. Elsevier, AmsterdamGoogle Scholar
  19. Marzke MW (1992) Evolutionary development of the human thumb. Hand Clin 8:1–8PubMedGoogle Scholar
  20. Mason CR, Gomez JE, Ebner TJ (2001) Hand synergies during reach-to-grasp. J Neurophysiol 86:2896–2910PubMedGoogle Scholar
  21. Olshausen B, Field D (1996) Emergence of simple-cell receptive field properties by learning a sparse code for natural images. Nature 381:607–609PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  22. Penfield W, Broldrey E (1937) Somatic motor and sensory representation in the cerebral cortex of man as studied by electrical stimulation. Brain 60:389–443CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  23. Poliakov AV, Schieber MH (1999) Limited functional grouping of neurons in the motor cortex hand area during individuated finger movements: a cluster analysis. J Neurophysiol 82:3488–3505PubMedGoogle Scholar
  24. Raghavan P, Petra E, Krakauer JW, Gordon AM (2006) Patterns of impairment in digit independence after subcortical stroke. J Neurophysiol 95:369–378PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  25. Reilly KT, Hammond GR (2000) Independence of force production by digits of the human hand. Neurosci Lett 290:53–56PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  26. Reilly KT, Schieber MH (2003) Incomplete functional subdivision of the human multi-tendon finger muscle flexor digitorum profundus: an electromyographic study. J Neurophysiol 90:2560–2570PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  27. Ruderman DL, Bialek W (1994) Statistics of natural images: scaling in the woods. Phys Rev Lett 73:814–817PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  28. Santello M, Flanders M, Soechting JF (1998) Postural hand synergies for tool use. J Neurosci 18:10105–10115PubMedGoogle Scholar
  29. Santello M, Flanders M, Soechting JF (2002) Patterns of hand motion during grasping and the influence of sensory guidance. J Neurosci 22:1426–1435PubMedGoogle Scholar
  30. Santello M, Soechting JF (1998) Gradual molding of the hand to object contours. J Neurophysiol 79:1307–1320PubMedGoogle Scholar
  31. Schieber MH (1999) Somatotopic gradients in the distributed organization of the human primary motor cortex hand area: evidence from small infarcts. Exp Brain Res 128:139–148PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  32. Schieber MH (2001) Constraints on somatotopic organization in the primary motor cortex. J Neurophysiol 86:2125–2143PubMedGoogle Scholar
  33. Schieber MH, Santello M (2004) Hand function: peripheral and central constraints on performance. J Appl Physiol 96:2293–2300PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  34. Schwartz DA, Howe CQ, Purves D (2003) The statistical structure of human speech sounds predicts musical universals. J Neurosci 23:7160–7168PubMedGoogle Scholar
  35. Stockwell RA (1981) Joints. In: Romanes GJ (ed) Cunningham’s textbook of anatomy. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 211–264Google Scholar
  36. Todorov E, Ghahramani Z (2004) Analysis of the synergies underlying complex hand manipulation. In: 26th annual international conference of the IEEE engineering in biology and medicine societyGoogle Scholar
  37. Tresch MC, Cheung VCK, d’Avella A (2006) Matrix factorization algorithms for the identification of muscle synergies: evaluation on simulated and experimental data sets. J Neurophysiol 95:2199–2212PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  38. Tuttle RH (1969) Quantitative and functional studies on the hands of the anthropoidea. 1 The hominoidea. J Morph 128:309–364PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  39. von Schroeder HP, Botte MJ (1993) The functional significance of the long extensors and juncturae tendinum in finger extension. J Hand Surg 18A:641647Google Scholar
  40. Weiss EJ, Flanders M (2004) Muscular and postural synergies of the human hand. J Neurophysiol 92:523–535PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  41. Zatsiorsky VM, Zong-Ming L, Latash ML (1998) Coordinated force production in multi-finger tasks: finger interaction and neural network modeling. Biol Cybern 79:139–150PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag 2008

Authors and Affiliations

  • James N. Ingram
    • 1
  • Konrad P. Körding
    • 2
  • Ian S. Howard
    • 1
  • Daniel M. Wolpert
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of EngineeringUniversity of CambridgeCambridgeUK
  2. 2.Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, Departments of Physiology, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Applied MathematicsNorthwestern UniversityChicagoUSA

Personalised recommendations