Kinematic Rules for Upper and Lower Arm Contributions to Grasp Orientation

Abstract

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the contribution of upper and lower arm torsion to grasp orientation during a reaching and grasping movement. In particular, we examined how the visuomotor system deals with the conflicting demands of coordinating upper and lower arm torsion and maintaining Donders' Law of the upper arm (a behavioral restriction of the axes of arm rotation to a two-dimensional “surface”). In experiment 1, subjects reached out and grasped a target block that was presented in one of 19 orientations (5° clockwise increments from horizontal to vertical) at one position in a vertical presentation board. In experiment 2, target blocks were presented in one of three orientations (horizontal, three-quarter, and vertical) at nine different positions in the presentation board. If reach and grasp commands control the proximal and distal arms separately, then one would only expect the lower arm to contribute to grasp orientations and that Donders' Law would hold for the upper arm—independent of grasp orientations. Instead, as the required grasp orientation increased from horizontal to vertical, there was a significant clockwise torsional rotation in the upper arm, which accounted for 9% of the final vertical grasp orientation, and the lower arm, which accounted for 42%. A linear relationship existed between the torsional rotations of the upper and lower arm, which indicates that the components of the arm rotate in coordination with one another. The location-dependent aspects of upper and lower arm torsion remained invariant, however, yielding consistently shaped Donders' “surfaces” (with different torsional offsets) for different grasp orientations. These observations suggest that the entire arm-hand system contributes to grasp orientation, and therefore, the reach/grasp distinction is not directly reflected in proximal-distal kinematics but is better reflected in the distinction between these coordinated orienting rules and the location-dependent kinematic rules for the upper arm that result in Donders' Law for one given grasp orientation.