Understanding the roles of touch and sight in day-to-day activities may help develop rehabilitation aids Neuroscientists Robert Volcic and Ivan Camponogara of New York University Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates found that using sight and touch together substantially improves reach-to-grasp actions suggesting that touch plays an important role in our movements The team compared grasping actions in a group of young When they could both see and touch an object their movements were faster and they formed smaller The researchers say sight and touch can be flexibly used together to optimize the execution of grasping movements because they are able to provide information about the size and position of an object These findings could be used to develop new rehabilitation aids for people with Parkinson's disease or stroke survivors who often struggle performing basic reaching and grasping movements They could also help people with curable congenital blindness to learn how to use touch to guide their actions "By providing them with a rehabilitation protocol in which touch educates vision we could speed up their learning process," explains Camponogara the team plans to explore other unknown facets of how the brain guides movements by integrating information provided by external cues that are sensed through vision and touch This could generate data that might be useful for building robots that can be programmed to learn and execute movements by interacting with the environment Grasping movements toward seen and handheld objects Sign-up to receive our e-alert update every two weeks to keep up with everything new on the portal For more information regarding your personal data read our privacy policy Metrics details Grasping movements are typically performed toward visually sensed objects planning and execution of grasping movements can be supported also by haptic information when we grasp objects held in the other hand In the present study we investigated this sensorimotor integration process by comparing grasping movements towards objects sensed through visual When movements were based on haptic information only the digits closed on the object more slowly and the final phase was more cautious compared to movements based on only visual information the simultaneous availability of vision and haptics led to faster movements and to an overall decrease of the grip aperture Our findings also show that each modality contributes to a different extent in different phases of the movement with haptics being more crucial in the initial phases and vision being more important for the final on-line control vision and haptics can be flexibly combined to optimize the execution of grasping movement how humans perform grasping movements based on haptic input or on the combination of visual and haptic sensory inputs remains to be fully established the maximum grip aperture of the contralateral hand consistently scales with the haptically perceived size of the object how does grasping under haptic guidance compare to visually guided grasping does haptic information support vision when both are available during the execution of a grasping action haptic information may have been completely ignored and movements were planned and executed by relying on visual information alone blending the haptic with the visual information when both are available even prior to movement start would be the best strategy to minimize the risk of misestimating the position and/or the size of an object we compared grasping actions under haptic only visual only or visuo-haptic guidance to further investigate the unisensory and multisensory processes in prehension participants had full vision of the object and the workspace vision was prevented and participants used their left hand to continuously feel the object that was the target of the grasping action performed with their right hand participants could make use of both visual and haptic information throughout the movement the object that was the target of the grasping action was the exact same object that the participants felt with the other hand To understand how unisensory and multisensory information is used to plan and execute grasping movements we have monitored the movements of the hand and the digits as the reach and grasp unfolded throughout the entire movement trajectory instead of relying only on specific kinematic markers (maximum grip aperture There are important advantages of this approach movements that are indistinguishable in terms of kinematic markers might turn out to fundamentally differ in other important aspects the relative role of visual and haptic information in multisensory integration is not necessarily fixed and might instead dynamically develop along the movement We tested a sample of 20 participants (10 male recruited at New York University Abu Dhabi All had normal or corrected-to-normal vision and no known history of neurological disorders All the participants were naïve to the purpose of the experiment and were provided with a subsistence allowance The experiment was undertaken with the understanding and written informed consent of each participant and experimental procedures were approved by the Institutional Review Board of New York University Abu Dhabi in compliance with the Code of Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) Experimental setup: top view of the subject’s start (a) and end (b) positions A pair of occlusion goggles (Red Scientific USA) was used to prevent vision of the workspace in the haptic condition and between trials 65 dB of intensity was used to signal the start of the trial while another one of 600 Hz with the same length and intensity to signal its end thumb and wrist movements were acquired on-line at 200 Hz with sub-millimeter resolution by using an Optotrak Certus system (Northern Digital Inc. Markers were attached on the first phalanx of the thumb and index digit onto the The Optotrak system and the occlusion goggles were both controlled by a custom Matlab program Participants sat comfortably in front of the table, with the center of their torso positioned between the object, located on their left side, and the home position, located on their right side (Fig. 1a) Participants were required to perform a precision grip with their right thumb and index digit along the y-axis of the stimulus in three different conditions: Visual (V): Participants were allowed to see the object (goggles open); Haptic (H): Vision was prevented participants were allowed to touch the object along its y-axis with the left hand (goggles closed); Visuo-haptic (VH): Participants were allowed to both see and touch the object (goggles open) All the trials started with the participants’ thumb and index digit of the right hand positioned on the home position (Fig. 1a) the left hand positioned on the left side of the object (at a comfortable distance) and the shutter goggles closed Before each trial the object was set to the appropriate size (5 cm or 6 cm) the experimenter signaled to the participants to touch the object with their left hand (i.e. sense its size and position by means of tactile and proprioceptive feedback) while shutter goggles remained closed the goggles turned transparent to enable the participant to see the object the participants had to touch the object with their left hand and the goggles turned transparent Representation of the task under Haptic The grasping action was always performed with the right hand In H and VH participants were already holding the object with their left hand before the start of the grasping action three different configurations of the cube’s sides were used: one where both the expandable sides were in one where the thumb side was slid out and one where the index digit side was slid out All the analyses will consider the latter two configurations in which the object was of the same size (6 cm) These data were collapsed for all further analyses Each modality condition was recorded in a separate block of trials The order of these blocks was randomized across participants while sides configurations were randomized within each modality We ran ten trials for each configuration which led to a total of 90 trials per participant (30 for each modality) a training session was performed in which ten trials were run in each modality to accustom the participants with the task Trials in which the end of the movement was not captured correctly or the missing marker samples could not be reconstructed using interpolation were discarded from further analysis The vast majority of the trials with missing marker samples was among the same four participants The exclusion of these participants left us with 960 trials from which another 61 trials had to be removed from further analysis Average performance in terms of (a) movement duration, (b) maximum grip aperture, (c) maximum wrist velocity, (d) maximum wrist deceleration, in the haptic (H), visual (V), and visuo-haptic (VH) conditions. Error bars represent the standard error of the mean. Top view of the average thumb and index digit trajectories in the three conditions The lines on the top represent the trajectories of the index digit the lines on the bottom represent the trajectories of the thumb V and VH modalities are represented respectively in light green Triangles represent the position along the trajectory where participants reached the MVW The vertical position of the symbols coincides with the midpoint between the thumb and index digit positions The pMGA of the V condition is not visible For each kinematic variable we performed a repeated measures ANOVA considering as within factor the three modalities: Visual Bonferroni correction was applied to the follow-up pair-wise comparisons thumb and index digit trajectory was resampled in 201 points evenly spaced along the three-dimensional trajectory in the range from 0 (movement onset) to 1 (movement end) in 0.005 steps using cubic spline interpolation Grip aperture and wrist velocity were then determined at each step of the space-normalized trajectories. To investigate the unfolding of the grip aperture and the wrist velocity between modalities (H-V, VH-V, and VH-H) we ran a Bonferroni corrected paired t-tests at each step of the space-normalized trajectories (Fig. 5). Average (a) grip aperture and (b) wrist velocity in the H V and VH conditions along the space-normalized trajectory Shaded horizontal bars below each panel represent the evolution of the p-value along the trajectory for each comparison this movement rapidity did not hinder performance the MGA reduction suggests that the joint visuo-haptic information actually optimized grasping movements The above analyses did not show striking differences between the H and V modalities. However, based on this evidence we cannot conclude that the actions were actually performed in a similar fashion. In fact, the analysis of pMGA and pMWD showed that the MGA and MWD occurred earlier along the movement in H compared to V and VH (Fig. 4) the kinematic peaks in V and VH occurred in virtually the same portions of the movement It is clear that the available sensory information directly determined the planning and execution of grasping movements To investigate these distinctions more thoroughly we proceeded with a series of analyses that take into account the grip aperture and the wrist velocity along the whole unfolding of the movement (i.e. The haptic modality thus seems to have an important role in action guidance in the early stages of the action whereas vision takes control in the later stages when the hand is in the object’s proximity the wrist velocity in V was significantly lower than in VH from the 7% to the 10.5% and a second time from the 75% to the 95% of the trajectory (5b as we have found in the grip aperture analysis our data suggest that vision plays a very relevant role in the final phases of the movement the faster movement in VH compared to V supports the idea that visual and haptic information is combined to accomplish the grasping action in the most efficient way The aims of the present study were twofold we compared grasping movements toward an object that was only seen (visual input) and toward an object that was continuously felt by the other non-grasping hand (haptic input based on both proprioception and touch) to unravel the differences and the similarities between these grasping categories we tested whether the motor system makes use of the multisensory information when grasping movements are under both haptic and visual guidance Our results show that grasping movements under haptic or visual guidance share some similarities but also exhibit some critical differences the combined visuo-haptic information optimizes grasping by speeding up the movement and by reducing the grip aperture that is necessary to successfully grasp the object even though the haptic on-line feedback from the non-grasping hand was potentially available From this we may infer that haptic information about either the size or the position of the object is less reliable than in vision and it thus promotes a different grasping behavior participants in our study could see that their left hand was holding the object while performing the reach-to-grasp action with the right hand thus making it obvious that what they were feeling was the same object that they were looking at two signals supply us with independent haptic information The fingers enclosing the object provide information about the object size the flexion-extension of the arm provides information about the position of the object the visual and haptic signals could be integrated in several ways to plan the grasping action the haptic position estimate would be integrated with the visual position estimate to promote a better visual size estimate which would be integrated with the haptic size estimate the estimate of distance would be based only on vision and thus only the haptic size estimate would be integrated with the visual size estimate only the haptic and visual distance estimates would be integrated to provide a multisensory distance estimate used to scale the visual size information the sensory feedback from the visual and haptic modalities needs to be integrated also in real-time along the movement trajectory The current data do not allow to distinguish between these scenarios and they will thus needed to be addressed in future studies we showed that the simultaneous availability of both visual and haptic information of the target object substantially improves reach-to-grasp actions the nervous system combines visual and haptic information to optimize movement execution The authors can make the data available upon request The Neural and Behavioural Organization of Goal-Directed Movements (Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press A neurological dissociation between 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visual-haptic mismatch Prehension is really reaching and grasping Effects of changing object size during prehension R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing On-line visual control of grasping movements Robust movement segmentation by combining multiple sources of information The Impact of Prior Knowledge about Visual Feedback on Motor Performance and Learning The multiple process model of goal-directed reaching revisited The influence of advance information about target location and visual feedback on movement planning and execution Optimal control strategies under different feedback schedules: Kinematic evidence Effects of object shape and visual feedback on hand configuration during grasping Vision of the hand and environmental context in human prehension Visual information and object size in the control of reaching The role of proprioception in the control of prehension movements: a kinematic study in a peripherally deafferented patient and in normal subjects The effect of viewing the moving limb and target object during the early phase of movement on the online control of grasping Visuomotor transformation process in goal-directed prehension: Utilization of online vision during preshaping phase of grasping Use of early phase online vision for grip configuration is modulated according to movement duration in prehension Determinants of apparent visual size with distant variant The current status of the size-distance hypothesis The distance used for scaling disparities is the same as the one used for scaling retinal size Visuomotor adaptation changes stereoscopic depth perception and tactile discrimination The endless visuomotor calibration of reach-to-grasp actions Download references conducted the experiment and analyzed the data designed the experiment and wrote the manuscript The authors declare no competing interests Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional 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Life SciencesCitation Excerpt :In this study it was found that SB-366791 diminished mechanical allodynia and thermal hyperalgesia observed after CCI corroborating with those data in the literature that TRPV1 antagonists may have antinociceptive effects in the neuropathy model caused by CCI [50,51] A large reserve of polysaccharides and oils are present in Amphilophium crucigerum seeds since the seeds are known to be part of the plant that accumulates nutritive reserves [3,52] the low yield of diosmetin about the crude extract (0.01%) is justifiable since most of the extract is composed of sugars Journal of Integrative MedicineCitation Excerpt :The fruits of A crucigerum are used in folk medicine to treat inflammation skin infection and headache and as a calming agent [11] This species also showed an antioxidant potential against free radicals and antinociceptive effects [12,13] paniculatum showed significant anti-inflammatory activity and analgesic antioxidant and antihyperglycemic effects [14] Journal of EthnopharmacologyCitation Excerpt :Ear thickness was measured before and 6 h after the croton oil or croton oil plus treatment application mice were euthanised to collect ear biopsies for further analysis (Brum et al. Skin inflammation by croton oil multiple topical applications (0.4 mg/ear) in the mouse right ear and 5 of the experimental protocol was also induced European Journal of Pharmaceutical SciencesCitation Excerpt :The number of animals and amount of irritant agent employed were the minimum necessary to demonstrate consistent effects of the treatments Ear edema was induced by a single topical application of the irritant agent croton oil (1 mg/ear diluted in acetone; 20 μL) on the right ear of the animal (Brum et al. To evaluate the potential anti-inflammatory action of the developed hydrogels mice were divided in nine groups with 6–8 animals each: Abu Dhabi: A group of six athletes based in Abu Dhabi smashed the Guinness World Records (GWR) title for most chest to ground burpees in 24 hours the team managed to double that with 12,502 burpees in the same allocated time," GWR said in a statement on Sunday to Emirates News Agency (WAM) a serial Guinness World Records record-breaker super-fit trainer and mom of three; Ivan Camponogara a researcher in human movement science; Daniel Gill assistant director of wellness at a UAE-based university; Tereza Petrovicova a student and fitness lover; Brandon Chin Loy a computer engineering senior; and Anna Erdi Joined by two witnesses a time throughout their 'official attempt' the team received encouraging messages on a live conference call the pandemic is no time for her to turn into a couch-potato the team challenged each other to double down on their efforts - even if our gym sessions are on-hold and we are separated from our teammates," said Daniel Gill Twelve certificates in total sit on Eva Clarke's wall today "I managed to set 15 Guinness World Records titles in the past It is delightful to see other women pushing their limits in the same category The thing that I try to preach and practice each day is to encourage women to explore their potential." As this period of training is different but nonetheless valuable the team was trying to make the most of unusual circumstances "Coming face-to-face with physical challenges never seems to deter me - with every problem encountered I take on each adversity with a determined mindset and a will to succeed," said Ivan Camponogara who is also a specialised researcher in finding new ways to help sensory and motor impaired people GWR said it is now rolling out online Remote Adjudication for both individuals and brands The service was launched in response to the recent outbreak senior marketing manager at GWR’s MENA office said "We congratulate the team on their achievement during lockdown they adapted quickly to our newly launched Remote Adjudication service and presented them with the certificate in a chain video Our job is to inspire and encourage brands and individuals to celebrate their achievements wherever they are." as all it takes is just one decision to change your attitude 180 degrees but it can be a better normal," added Anna Erdi who also celebrated graduation with a psychology degree Clarke has just added another world record to her total of 12 including most pull-ups in one hour (female) She also holds the titles for most knuckle push-ups in one minute (female) as well as most burpees in 24 hours (female) most chest to ground push-up burpees in 24 hours (female) In addition to the fastest marathon carrying a 40lb backpack (female) set during the Virgin Money London Marathon in London in 2015 The attempt aimed at encouraging individuals to stay fit while at home and inspire more people to achieve bigger dreams despite the lockdown.