TOUCH AND GRIP

 

 

  

 

Research

Team

Collaborations

Publications

 

RESEARCH

 

We are studying the sense of touch and its role in dexterous manipulation. More particularly, we are investigating the biomechanical properties of the fingertips and its role in tactile perception and dexterous manipulation. A complementary aim is to expand knowledge in the domain of the complex interactions between feed-forward and feedback mechanisms in the control of dexterous manipulations. We are studying these mechanisms in patients with neurological disturbances as well as in normal subjects under unusual environmental conditions, such as microgravity. We have also developed a manual ability scale in order to measure the capacity to manage daily activities requiring the use of the upper limbs. We used the Rasch model to develop and validate this scale called ABILHAND (http://www.rehab-scales.org).

The current projects are :

• Dexterous manipulation in new gravity fields,
• Adaptation of grip force to compensate for static and dynamic torques during object manipulation,
• The neural organization of dexterous manipulation in healthy subjects and in cerebral damaged patients,
• Mechanical properties of fingertip-object contact during haptic exploration and dexterous manipulation,
• Intensive intervention for children with cerebral palsy : new psychometric tools & neurophysiologycal changes,
• Interlimb coordination in children with cerebral palsy,
• Perception and neural coding of natural and virtual textures.

 Website: http://www.uclouvain.be/jean-louis.thonnard

 

TEAM

 

Principal investigator

• Jean-Louis THONNARD, PhD, (Head of the research group)

Phd students 

• Allan BARREA, PhD Student
• Laurent OPSOMER, PhD Student
• Oyéné KOSSI, PhD Student
• Erwan GUILLERY, PhD Student
• Daniela EBNER KARESTINOS, PhD Student
• Félicien SCHILTZ, PhD Student

Technical and administrative staff

• Leila AZZAZ, accountant
• Cathy Friand, administrative assistant
• Benvenuto JACOB, computer scientist
• Cécile LOMBART, ingénieur industriel
• Christian LEBEGUE, electronics technician
• Sébastien WILMET, computer scientist

Scientific collaborators

• Charles Sèbiyo BATCHO
• Massimo PENTA
• David GUEORGUIEV

 

 

COLLABORATIONS

 

International collaborations:

• Université Paris Descartes - CNRS (McIntyre J.)
• University of Columbia, Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology (Friel K. & Gordon A.G.)
• Université Paris 06, Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique (Hayward V.)
• University of Birmingham, Department of Chemical Engineering (Adams M.)
• Queen’s University, Centre for Neuroscience Studies (Crevecoeur F.)
• Umeå University, Department of Physiology (Edin B.)