Bimanual control of position and force in people with multiple sclerosis: preliminary results

Ballardini, Giulia; Ponassi, Valentina; Galofaro, Elisa; Pellegrino, Laura; Solaro, Claudio; Müller, Margit; Casadio, Maura

doi:10.1109/icorr.2019.8779377

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 33 publications

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“…Positive values indicate an overshoot of the target force, and negative values an undershoot (Schmidt et al, 1988;Marini et al, 2016;Ballardini et al, 2019b).…”

Section: Bimanual Task Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Bimanual Isometric Force Control in Young and Older Adults

Galofaro

Valè

Ballardini

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Background: Several activities of daily living require bimanual force coordination during interactions with objects. However, while the decline of sensory perception and motor functions with age have been largely studied, the impact of aging on the bilateral control of isometric forces is less investigated. This study aims at providing a comprehensive description of the bimanual force control strategies adopted by unimpaired young and older adults in an isometric force tracking task. Methods: Participants were required to apply with the two hands simultaneously the same amount of isometric force by pushing on two decoupled plates, which appeared as two lateral faces of a box on a table. The total force had to match a force profile composed of time-variant and constant phases, reaching three target force levels: low, medium, and high. Visual feedback was provided only for the total force, but not for the force exerted by each hand. Thirty-one volunteers participated in the study: 15 of age 25±1 std years and 16 of age 77±7std years. Differences between the two groups were tested with repeated measure ANOVA with the group as a between-subjects factor. Results: The older group had higher matching errors and more variable force profiles compared to the younger group. Most of the older participants also undershot the highest force level. Both groups had more difficulty matching a time-variant than a constant force profile, and this difficulty was higher for the older group. As for differences between the force applied by the two hands, the older group had lower lateral symmetry, although the hand applying more force varied across participants and target forces. For the lower target level, the amount of total force applied by the left hand correlated with its variability expressed by the coefficient of variation. Conclusions: This study provides the first proof of concept that the proposed paradigm, based on a low-cost sensorized device, can be used to characterize and quantify age-related differences in bimanual isometric force control. The device and the paradigm can be used for assessment in clinical settings and then explored as a possible rehabilitative tool.

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“…Positive values indicate an overshoot of the target force, and negative values an undershoot (Schmidt et al, 1988;Marini et al, 2016;Ballardini et al, 2019b).…”

Section: Bimanual Task Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Bimanual Isometric Force Control in Young and Older Adults

Galofaro

Valè

Ballardini

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Soft Robotics to Enhance Upper Limb Endurance in Individuals with Multiple Sclerosis

Lotti,

Missiroli,

Galofaro

et al. 2024

Soft Robotics

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Interaction between position sense and force control in bimanual tasks

Ballardini

Ponassi

Galofaro

et al. 2019

J NeuroEngineering Rehabil

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BackgroundSeveral daily living activities require people to coordinate the motion and the force produced by both arms, using their position sense and sense of effort. However, to date, the interaction in bimanual tasks has not been extensively investigated.MethodsWe focused on bimanual tasks where subjects were required: (Experiment 1) to move their hands until reaching the same position – equal hand position implied identical arm configurations in joint space - under different loading conditions;(Experiment 2) to produce the same amount of isometric force by pushing upward, with their hands placed in symmetric or asymmetric positions.The arm motions and forces required for accomplishing these tasks were in the vertical direction. We enrolled a healthy population of 20 subjects for Experiment 1 and 25 for Experiment 2. Our primary outcome was the systematic difference between the two hands at the end of each trial in terms of position for Experiment 1 and force for Experiment 2. In both experiments using repeated measure ANOVA we evaluated the effect of each specific condition, namely loading in the former case and hand configuration in the latter.ResultsIn the first experiment, the difference between the hands’ positions was greater when they were concurrently loaded with different weights. Conversely, in the second experiment, when subjects were asked to exert equal forces with both arms, the systematic difference between left and right force was not influenced by symmetric or asymmetric arm configurations, but by the position of the left hand, regardless of the right hand position. The performance was better when the left hand was in the higher position.ConclusionsThe experiments report the reciprocal interaction between position sense and sense of effort inbimanual tasks performed by healthy subjects. Apart for the intrinsic interest for a better understanding of basic sensorimotor processes, the results are also relevant to clinical applications, for defining functional evaluation and rehabilitative protocols for people with neurological diseases or conditions that impair the ability to sense and control concurrently position and force.

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Bimanual control of position and force in people with multiple sclerosis: preliminary results

Cited by 3 publications

References 33 publications

Bimanual Isometric Force Control in Young and Older Adults

Bimanual Isometric Force Control in Young and Older Adults

Soft Robotics to Enhance Upper Limb Endurance in Individuals with Multiple Sclerosis

Interaction between position sense and force control in bimanual tasks

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