A research team at the University of Central Florida (UCF) is observing how people interact with tasks that require coordinating two limbs, each controlling a robotic device, to complete a task within a virtual environment. As part of the research, the task simulations will randomly impede trial participants and lead them to decide how to compensate for the constraint placed upon one or more limbs. The lead researcher, Qiushi Fu, PhD, proposed that the knowledge gained from the project can provide significant insight to improve the effectiveness of motor rehabilitation interventions for restoring upper-limb function in individuals affected by limb loss or neurological disorders.
“It’s important to go beyond experimental tasks and have participants perform actual real-life tasks,” said Fu, a professor in the university’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. “We also want to measure coordination in everyday tasks like buttoning or cutting a piece of paper with motion tracking technologies.
“The objective of this research is we want to understand how our brain controls our two hands to work on a task with a common goal,” he said. “One example is you’re pouring water from a bottle to a cup. So, imagine the hand holding the cup is being pushed by something. To successfully perform the task is to move the hand back or move the pouring hand, or both.”
The research is using healthy, young participants to perform those activities while their measure neural activity is measured via electrodes in a fitted cap to acquire a foundational understanding of bimanual coordination, Fu said. There will also be measurements of limb movements, muscle activities, and eye movements to pair with the neural data.
“If one hand makes a mistake or is impaired then the other can help compensate,” he said. “This is a decision the brain has to process, and we’re studying how the brain achieves this.”
Fu, whose research focus is on rehabilitation, prosthetics, sensorimotor control, and bioinspired robots, said he was motivated to investigate further when he noticed prior research on bimanual coordination primarily focused on tasks that require each limb to attain an independent goal rather than a common goal.
“None of these studies focused on how they complement each other,” Fu said. “I found that this particular topic wasn’t well understood, and in the past the research has focused on independent goal tasks, and our project focuses on common goal tasks.”
Collaborator include UCF faculty within the Disability, Aging and Technology Cluster to use their expertise in measuring brain activity and scientists at Arizona State University to apply neural stimulation to examine the functional role of a few different brain areas. Fu is also part of UCF’s Biionix Cluster of interdisciplinary researchers, which brings together medical scientists and engineers to study and enhance high-tech medical technologies.
“We’re hoping our research will provide biomarkers and baseline data to further investigate into patient populations to perform rehabilitation interventions and even regain motor control,” he said.
Editor’s note: This story was adapted from materials provided by UCF.
