Somatosensory feedback refines the perception of hand shape with respect to external constraints

• Somatosensory information contributes to the perception of hand shape.
• Muscle synergies depend on available hand postures for object manipulation.
• External constraints are incorporated into motor commands driving hand posture.

Motor commands issued by the CNS are based upon memories of past experiences with similar objects, the current state of the hand and arm postures, and sensory input. Thus widespread somatosensory information is available to form precise representations of hand shape on which to base motor commands to match a desired posture or movement. The aim of this study was to examine the extent to which somatosensory information reflecting external influences on independent finger movement is incorporated into the perception of hand shape driving the motor command. To address this issue, a matching task was performed while pairs of fingers in the grasping hand were constrained to move in tandem when grasping familiar objects. The hypothesis was that motor commands would be driven by comparison of the online sensory information from the matching hand to a desired somatosensory state determined by the current somatosensory input from the grasping hand. The results demonstrated that multi-muscle patterns of activation and hand postures were altered with respect to the external constraint on independent finger movement. A secondary aim of this study was to examine the influence of sensory information on the structure of the multi-muscle patterns. The hypothesis was that the same synergies (patterns of activation across muscles) would be used to complete the task but would be rescaled with respect to condition. The results demonstrated that rescaling the patterns of multi-muscle activity from the unconstrained condition could not equivalently represent those from the constrained conditions. Thus it appears that external restriction of independent finger movement was signaled by somatosensory feedback and incorporated into the desired state driving the motor command resulting in selective activation of groups of muscles.