The Effect Of Fine Motor Skill ( Or Finger Dexterity )

The improved precision and power of the hand muscles and its morphology leads to the prediction that the hand in humans has evolved and been adapted for

Fine motor control allows infants to exercise their hand muscles which helps them to play with toys. Some atypical behaviors are keeping hands closed without opening them and not grasping when objects are placed in the palm of the hand.

These involve the small muscles of the body used for hand –eye co-ordination, writing and grasping of small objects.

The two parts of the brain affected by spastic cerebral palsy are the cerebral motor cortex and the white matter. The cerebral motor cortex is responsible for movement, hearing, speech, thinking, visual processing etc. Therefore if the cerebral motor cortex is damaged then all those previously listed may be affected. White matter is responsible for transmitting signals to the body, consequently if it is damaged, nerve signals are interrupted. (Common Parts of the Brain Affected by Cerebral Palsy.)

According to Beek, Peper, and Stegeman (1995), “the motor control theories provide an explanation on how the nervous system will solve the degrees of freedom problem and serve to direct movement command.” The following theories are the generalized motor program theory and the dynamical systems theory. The GMP theory “proposes that the movement plan is retrieved from memory within the central nervous system and neural instructions are sent down to the effectors via the efferent pathways.” The dynamical systems approach on the other hand, “does not propose a hierarchical control, but suggests that movements emerge through self-organization of the interaction of the body and environment.” It can be said that everybody’s “bodily movements occur in the context of the everyday functioning of people while realizing specific task goals.” As a general, yet acquired rule, “such movements involve the participation of multiple joints and limbs.” Moreover, when in action, these body parts are “coordinated and are brought into proper relation to one another as well as to the surrounding layout of surface.” The coordination of these body parts may “look relatively simple, as in picking up an object, or relatively complicated, as in juggling, performing an attacking forehand drive in table tennis or playing the drums.” To the psychomotor scientist or researcher, however, “all coordination is complex in that he or she is confronted with the challenge to explain

The hand is a very important extremity attached to the human body and is used in everyday life. Humans use it doing almost everything. The major systems the body uses to be able to move the hands are the skeletal, muscular and nerves systems. The skeletal system of the hand involves the bones, such as, eight carpal bones, five metacarpal and fourteen finger bones (Istitute for Quality & Efficiency in Health Care, 2013). All connected by joints and ligaments. The muscles include two parts, the thenar eminence and the hypothenar eminence (Istitute for Quality & Efficiency in Health Care, 2013). The thenar eminence moves the base of the thumb, also lets the thumb touch the four fingers; the hypothenar eminence allows the little finger to bend

There is evidence to suggest that improved motor recovery occurs when the brain uses the original neural system to control the movement as this is shown to represent "true" recovery. Whereas, if new networks were to form in the unaffected hemisphere of the brain, motor recovery will be reduced. As a result of using these new networks, fine motor control is lost and employment of compensatory movement strategies are associated with a poorer functional outcome (Nudo, 2007). The recovery of motor skills following a stroke, like walking, relies on the brain’s ability

(Blakeslee 52) Therefore, the motor neurons are sending out signals to the body part that is missing there are also messages that are being sent to the parietal lobe that contains the “body image.” The information from both the missing body part and the partial lobe come together and give

Precision hand motions are controlled by the motor cortex (M1) and the corticospinal system. (Perez, 2015). The corticospinal system is also known as the pyramidal tracts. It is the upper motor neurons that go to the

The cerebellum, the part of the brain that regulates and coordinates the movements of the body. It allows us to do things without thinking and helps with memory. While driving the cerebellum coordinates the left and right hand movement.

A) Skills Training: The primary motor cortex is made up of interconnected neural assemblies (localized groups of neurons with similar inputs and outputs), that control movements in the fingers, hands, and legs. This coordinated activation can then be made complex and lets us do multijoint movements such as reaching. Before the study the theory was that during skills learning, the connectivity between these neural assemblies change. These changes were viewed as differences in cortical synapse numbers, synaptic strength, and the topography of stimulation-evoked movement representation. They did a study with adult rats to measure these changes while they do an obstacle course. Some rats had to learn limb placement and posture control to finish a complex obstacle course, and the others walked an unobstructed course. The rats that were required to learn limb placement and posture control because of the complex obstacle course, showed increases in synapse number within the motor cortex compare to the rats doing the simple obstacle. The synaptic changes seen here are thought to show the changes in cortical circuitry that results in the reorganization of the neural assemblies encoding movement. Therefore proving the theory correct. All this data indicates that training on a skill produces alterations in the

Fine motor skills involve the movement of smaller muscles such as hands, fingers, wrists, and toes (Kelly, 2014). Common examples of fine motor skills include: writing, using computer keyboards, turning pages, and eating. While Barry is not necessarily struggling with the use of his smaller muscles, his fine motor skills do need improvement. His handwriting is sometimes illegible, which affects his school grades. He also has difficulties using a computer keyboard. Barry types out his sentences with both index fingers rather than using multiple fingers at once. This makes typing out school assignments a tedious

The parietal lobe is responsible for our motor co-ordination; motor impulses to the muscles are

There are many physical advantages to gross motor skill development that play a role both in childhood and throughout the rest of that individual’s lifetime. Motor skills that are developed in infancy are essential steps to continue to build motor skills throughout childhood (Burns et al., 2017). In order to have the best physical potential to be able to carry out daily activities, gross motor skills are where this all begins. To have optimal function, an individual must learn how to control their movements with poise and rhythm.

A few examples of Fine Motor activities displayed during the early years include handwriting skills, drawing pictures, making objects out of clay, and even cutting with scissors. Each of these activities is characterized by including the small-muscle developments that involve finger-thumb coordination, hand-eye coordination, and the development of muscle strength in the hand and arm. All in all, motor skills are an important part of the learning process, and as these “fundamental motor skills are learned...[they] serve as the foundation for more specialized motor skills that will be