Zappe Anne-Catherin, Maucher Thorsten, Meier Karlheinz, Scheiber Christian
Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Kirchhoff Institut für Physik, Heidelberg, Germany.
Magn Reson Med. 2004 Apr;51(4):828-34. doi: 10.1002/mrm.20021.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments on tactile perception are difficult to perform because the special characteristics of an MRI environment restrict the experimental setup. Although recently developed actuators have made it possible to apply vibrotactile stimuli to the skin during an fMRI experiment, the projection of spatially extended patterns is still precluded. In order to examine the processing of tactile perception, a new pneumatically-driven tactile device (PTD) has been built. This device is capable of stimulating the skin, using arbitrary time sequences that consist of 2D tactile images up to 64 pixels. It is shown how the device is implemented in a 2 T fMRI environment, and show that it operates without generating artifacts. Dedicated software allows the generation of complex paradigms and provides a user-friendly interface to other brain mapping systems, as well as automated operation. This paper describes the PTD elucidates its features, and demonstrate its reliability by reporting results from an fMRI study based on an event-related protocol involving six subjects.
基于触觉感知的功能磁共振成像（fMRI）实验很难进行，因为MRI环境的特殊特性限制了实验设置。尽管最近开发的致动器使得在fMRI实验期间能够向皮肤施加振动触觉刺激，但空间扩展模式的投射仍然无法实现。为了研究触觉感知的处理过程，构建了一种新型气动驱动触觉装置（PTD）。该装置能够使用由多达64像素的二维触觉图像组成的任意时间序列来刺激皮肤。展示了该装置如何在2T的fMRI环境中实现，并表明其运行时不会产生伪影。专用软件允许生成复杂的范式，并为其他脑图谱系统提供用户友好的界面以及自动化操作。本文描述了PTD，阐明了其特点，并通过报告基于涉及六名受试者的事件相关协议的fMRI研究结果来证明其可靠性。
