An involuntary stereotypical grasp tendency pervades voluntary dynamic multifinger manipulation.

We used a novel apparatus with three hinged finger pads to characterize collaborative multifinger interactions during dynamic manipulation requiring individuated control of fingertip motions and forces. Subjects placed the thumb, index, and middle fingertips on each hinged finger pad and held it-unsupported-with constant total grasp force while voluntarily oscillating the thumb's pad. This task combines the need to 1) hold the object against gravity while 2) dynamically reconfiguring the grasp. Fingertip force variability in this combined motion and force task exhibited strong synchrony among normal (i.e., grasp) forces. Mechanical analysis and simulation show that such synchronous variability is unnecessary and cannot be explained solely by signal-dependent noise. Surprisingly, such variability also pervaded control tasks requiring different individuated fingertip motions and forces, but not tasks without finger individuation such as static grasp. These results critically extend notions of finger force variability by exposing and quantifying a pervasive challenge to dynamic multifinger manipulation: the need for the neural controller to carefully and continuously overlay individuated finger actions over mechanically unnecessary synchronous interactions. This is compatible with-and may explain-the phenomenology of strong coupling of hand muscles when this delicate balance is not yet developed, as in early childhood, or when disrupted, as in brain injury. We conclude that the control of healthy multifinger dynamic manipulation has barely enough neuromechanical degrees of freedom to meet the multiple demands of ecological tasks and critically depends on the continuous inhibition of synchronous grasp tendencies, which we speculate may be of vestigial evolutionary origin.