title: Robot-Aided Mapping of Wrist Proprioceptive Acuity across a 3D Workspace.
abstract: Proprioceptive signals from peripheral mechanoreceptors form the basis for bodily perception and are known to be essential for motor control. However we still have an incomplete understanding of how proprioception differs between joints, whether it differs among the various degrees-of-freedom (DoFs) within a particular joint, and how such differences affect motor control and learning. We here introduce a robot-aided method to objectively measure proprioceptive function: specifically, we systematically mapped wrist proprioceptive acuity across the three DoFs of the wrist/hand complex with the aim to characterize the wrist position sense. Thirty healthy young adults performed an ipsilateral active joint position matching task with their dominant wrist using a haptic robotic exoskeleton. Our results indicate that the active wrist position sense acuity is anisotropic across the joint, with the abduction/adduction DoF having the highest acuity (the error of acuity for flexion/extension is 4.64 ± 0.24°; abduction/adduction: 3.68 ± 0.32°; supination/pronation: 5.15 ± 0.37°) and they also revealed that proprioceptive acuity decreases for smaller joint displacements. We believe this knowledge is imperative in a clinical scenario when assessing proprioceptive deficits and for understanding how such sensory deficits relate to observable motor impairments.
authors.affiliation: Motor Learning and Robotic Rehabilitation Laboratory, Department of Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy.
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Marini
authors.affiliation: Motor Learning and Robotic Rehabilitation Laboratory, Department of Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy.
authors.forename: Valentina
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Squeri
authors.affiliation: Motor Learning and Robotic Rehabilitation Laboratory, Department of Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy.
authors.forename: Pietro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Morasso
authors.affiliation: Human Sensorimotor Control Laboratory, School of Kinesiology and Center for Clinical Movement Science, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States of America.
authors.forename: Jürgen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Konczak
authors.affiliation: School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore.
authors.forename: Lorenzo
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Masia
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology; D011434:Proprioception / Q000502:physiology*; D012371:Robotics / Q000379:methods; D014953:Wrist / Q000502:physiology*