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Hand
and Finger Coordination in Down Syndrome
David
Patterson davepatt@eri.uchsc.edu
&
Mark Latash mll11@psu.edu
Coping with poor motor coordination
is arguably the most frequently encountered problem in everyday llife by persons
with Down syndrome and other cognitive or developmental disabilities. The cerebellum
is a major structure within the CNS for which significant differences have been
documented between persons with Down Syndrome and the typical population. The
cerebellum has been assumed to play a central role in the formation of synergies
(behavioral purposes of central organizations of sets of elements into task-
or function-specific units), in both motor and non-motor domains. Therefore,
project staff hypothesized that behavioral differences observed in persons with
Down syndrome may be causally related to their deficit in the ability to form
synergies.Specific objectives of the project were:
- To document differences
in synergy organization in persons with Down Syndrome in tasks including
finger coordination during multi-finger force production and hand coordination
during bimanual object manipulation, and
- To study the effects
of 3-day practice on the indices of coordination during these tasks.
This study improves our understanding
of the capacity of persons with Down Syndrome to use a keyboard. A manuscript
"Finger Coordination in Persons with Down Syndrome: Atypical Patterns of
Coordination and the Effects of Practice" is available in the journal Experimental
Brain Research.