Recovery of fine motor control after submaximal wrist fatigue
Daniel Cousins et al.
What the paper says
This study investigated how a repeated submaximal hand tracking task affects fine motor performance and short-term recovery. Nineteen males traced a 2:3 Lissajous curve using a haptic wrist robot both pre- and post-fatigue. The fatigue protocol was the same task with resistance applied to the handle of the robot at 40% maximal voluntary isometric wrist force. Performance was measured at baseline and at seven intervals during recovery (0, 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 minutes). The fatigue protocol led to a 12% decrease in grip force and remained below baseline at 10 minutes. Movement quality, quantified by tracking error, figural error, and jerk ratio, increased by 23%, 19%, and 27%, immediately following fatigue but normalised by 4 minutes. This work highlights how submaximal forearm muscle fatigue can temporarily compromise hand tracking ability but suggests that movement accuracy and smoothness recover rapidly with rest.
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
| M · momentum | 0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.