Fingertip forces during object manipulation in children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy. II: Bilateral coordination

The present study examines the coordination of fingertip forces during obje ct manipulation in both the involved and non-involved band of 14 children w ith hemiplegic cerebral palsy (CP) aged between 8 and 14 years. While no im pairment could be observed in the non-involved hand, subtle deficits in the sequencing of the grip-lift movement were observed in all children tested in this hand. However, they were able to scale the fingertip force output o f the noninvolved hand in advance (use anticipatory control) based on the o bject's weight. In the second experiment in this paper, we tested whether t he anticipatory control can be generalized across hands. The results indica te that sensory information from the non-involved hand can be used for anti cipatory scaling of isometric force increase during subsequent lifts with t he contralateral involved hand. These findings suggest that the initial lac k of anticipatory control usually observed in the involved hand of children with hemiplegic CP is likely to be based on disturbed sensory input.