Hand Movement Compensation on Visual Target Tracking for Patients with Movement Disorders

Abstract

Skillful motor control of human is achieved by the appropriate motor commands generating from the central nerve system. Brain dysfunction in the cerebral cortex, cerebellum and/or basal ganglia causes serious movement disorders such as cerebellar ataxia, Parkinson disease and so on. Compensation of the hand movement by adding an external force is a way for recovering a motor function of human and will be helpful for improving the quality of patients’ daily life. A test of visual target tracking is one of the effective methods for analyzing the human motor functions. We have previously examined a possibility for improving the hand movement on visual target tracking by additional assistant force through a simulation study.

In this study, a method for compensating the human hand movement on visual target tracking by adding an assistant force is proposed. Effectiveness of the compensation method was investigated through the simulation study for patients with movement disorders and the experiment for four healthy adults. Sufficient improvement of the hand movement such as reactivity, smoothness and so on was seen through both the simulation and experimental study.

The proposed method can reflects the properties of the hand movement for different subjects in the structure of the compensator. Therefore, the proposed method will be easily adjustable to the individual properties of patients with various movement disorders caused from brain dysfunctions.