The influence of perturbing the working surface during reaching and grasping in children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy.

PURPOSE

To examine unimanual and bimanual reaching and grasping in children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy with particular emphasis on the nature and extent of interlimb coupling when the working surface is perturbed.

METHOD

Nine children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy and 7 control children with no movement difficulties took part in the study. Children were asked to pick up a cube unimamually and bimanually when the surface it was placed on was either sloping away from the child (Experiment 1) or towards the child (Experiment 2). Both 3D kinematic data and video data were gathered and qualitative descriptions of video data were made.

RESULTS

The working surface did indeed influence the nature and extent of interlimb coupling and this varied from participant to participant. Analysis of the displacement data revealed that during the bimanual condition lower trajectories were produced by both the hemiplegic and non hemiplegic sides, especially in Experiment 2. The control group showed little difference between the unimanual and bimanual condition.

CONCLUSIONS

Evidence of interlimb coupling is found, these studies support the findings of our previous work that indicates that there are some benefits to performing bimanual movements in children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy.