Jessica Holst-Wolf, PhD, postdoctoral researcher in the Human Sensorimotor and Control Laboratory (HSCL) in the School of Kinesiology, is the lead author of a recent article published in Frontiers of Psychology.

The article describes an assessment to measure haptic function, which is our perception of objects, such as their texture and shape, that we explore with our hands. Haptic loss severely compromises the fine motor control of our hands and impairs many daily manual tasks. Today, no widely accepted assessments protocols of haptic function are in clinical use, due primarily to the scarcity of fast, objective measures capable of characterizing mild to severe forms of haptic dysfunction with appropriate resolution. This new test introduces a novel curvature-perception assessment system called the Minnesota Haptic Function Test™ that seeks to overcome the shortcomings of current clinical assessments.

The article’s other authors include Yu-Ting Tseng, PhD, another former lab member and currently assistant professor of National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, and Jürgen Konczak, PhD, professor and director of the HSCL.