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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Hum. Neurosci.
Sec. Motor Neuroscience
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2025.1574002
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Introduction: To develop an efficient rehabilitation program for patients with stroke to acquire fine motor skills such as chopstick manipulation, it is necessary to examine the differences in fundamental muscle functions between the hands during motor tasks. The aim of this study was to clarify the differences in muscle activity and intermuscular coordination between dominant and non-dominant hands during chopstick manipulation. Methods: Twenty-eight healthy adults performed the task of picking up different-sized objects using chopsticks with either their dominant or non-dominant hand. Surface electromyography of 11 intrinsic and extrinsic hand muscles was performed, and muscle activity and muscle activity waveforms during the task were calculated. Activity patterns and weighting for each pattern were extracted from the muscle activity waveforms using non-negative matrix factorization to represent intermuscular coordinationmuscle synergy. The muscle activity and weighting were compared between the dominant and non-dominant hands and among different-sized objects.Results: The activities of most intrinsic and extrinsic muscles did not significantly differ between the dominant and non-dominant hands or among different-sized objects. Although activity patterns showed the coordination of intrinsic hand muscles in both the dominant and non-dominant hands, the combinations of the weighting differed between the dominant and non-dominant hands. The non-dominant hand had different muscle activation patternscoordination of intrinsic and extrinsic hand muscles compared to the dominant hand.The activity patterns and weighting were mostly similar across different-sized objects.The dominant hand showed coordination of the first and second appendicularis lumbrical muscles, whereas the non-dominant hand showed no muscle activation patternscoordination between the muscles. Therefore, it is important to emphasize the first and second fasciculus lumbrical in the non-dominant hand during rehabilitation to improve the coordination between the muscles of the two hands during chopstick manipulation to effectively improve chopstick manipulation skills in the non-dominant hand.
Keywords: Intermuscular coordination, muscle activity, chopstick manipulation, Muscle Synergy, Dominant hand, Non-dominant hand
Received: 10 Feb 2025; Accepted: 25 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Komi, Kurumadani, Kurauchi, Date and Sunagawa. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Toru Sunagawa, Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
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