Spatial and temporal control of trunk-assisted prehensile actions

The present study utilized a trunk-assisted prehension task to examine the hypothesis that there is spatial regularity between the grasp and transport components. To test this hypothesis, we varied movement amplitude, reach speed, and object size. When examining the opening and closure phases of aperture formation, it was found that the distance to peak aperture increased systematically with hand-path trajectory length, while the distance from peak aperture to the object remained constant, which supports the notion of state-space control. Regarding the relationship among the body segments involved, temporal measures such as relative time to peak aperture, and peak velocity of the arm and trunk were altered by the changes in both object size and reach speed. It was also found that the time to peak trunk velocity was coupled with the time to peak arm velocity as well as with the time to peak aperture. Based on these results, it appears that the trunk is closely linked not only to the arm motion, but also to the aperture formation. Collectively, these findings suggest that, during trunk-assisted prehension, the arm and the trunk are coordinated by neuromotor synergies that appear to position grip aperture for a stable closure to grasp the object.