Journal

The Japanese journal of neuropsychology

[Vol.29 No.1 contents]
Japanese/English

Full Text of this Article
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ArticleTitle The human hand
Language J
AuthorList Nagatsugu Kuroshima
Affiliation Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Teikyo University School of Medicine
Publication Japanese Journal of Neuropsychology: 29 (1), 56-60, 2013
Received
Accepted
Abstract The human hand is deeply related to its native culture and society, and while it may seem able to be concealed from view, it cannot be hidden from people completely. Therefore, hand abnormalities may become a cause of various kinds of mental stress, and the hand may easily become an object of self-injury or may be faked or altered to gain social attention and benefits. Simply stated, "The hand is easily injured and faked."
As for the functional aspects of the hand, the playing of musical instruments is the fruitage of a high degree of brain-hand coordination. Especially, the performance of the professional pianist is viewed as a model of the most sophisticated energy-saving mode.
Through the hands and tools, the brain assimilates into the objective world. Successful microsurgery has demonstrated that the brain can easily assimilate into even the tiny world which is visualized through the microscope. With a brain-machine interface of only 100 electrodes, a monkey could manipulate a robotic arm by "thinking" alone. This result disputes the concept of functional localization in the brain, and shows that another input and output device could be directly linked to the brain, bypassing or excluding the hand area.
Keywords hand, Brain-Machine Interface, musical performance, microsurgery, telesurgery

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