Robotic extra-fingers aimed to compensate grasping abilities in patients with hand motor impairment is an emerging and expanding field of research bridging neuroscience, robotics and rehabilitation. Our wearable robotic extra-thumb [the recently patented Soft Sixth Finger (SSF)] has helped chronic stroke patients to compensate the missing thumb function of their paretic hand. Supernumerary fingers are of great interest also for augmenting natural grasp abilities in healthies, as in working scenarios. Despite successful pilot studies in patients and healthy subjects in using the SSF, the neural underpinnings of these behavioural gains relevant for daily living and working activities are still unknown. Similarly, it is still an open field of research whether the SSF might be actually embodied into the user’s body schema. The Consortium will address these issues by capitalizing of psychophysics and brain stimulation technologies to noninvasively investigate these mechanisms, addressing brain modifications in terms of brain dynamics, acquisition of new bioartificial motor synergies, as well as possible embodiment processes favouring the inclusion of the SSF, that widens the hand space, into the user’s body schema. We will explore neural correlates of SSF’ use by Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) alone or combined with EEG (TMS-EEG), besides evaluating psychophysical variables based on the compatibility effect.

Disclaimer: This project has been funded under contract CUP B53D23018690006 – Codice Progetto Prot. 2022J72LFW_001 Missione 4 Componente 2 (M4C2) – Investimento 1.1: Fondo per il Programma Nazionale Ricerca (PNR) e progetti di Ricerca di Significativo Interesse Nazionale (PRIN) del Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza (PNRR) finanziato dall’Unione Europea “Next Generation EU”, 2022