Department of Clinical Neuroscience, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
J Neural Eng. 2010 Dec;7(6):064001. doi: 10.1088/1741-2560/7/6/064001. Epub 2010 Nov 17.
Although major advances have been made in the development of motor prostheses, fine motor control requires intuitive somatosensory feedback. Here we explored whether a thalamic site for a somatosensory neural prosthetic could provide natural somatic sensation to humans. Different patterns of electrical stimulation (obtained from thalamic spike trains) were applied in patients undergoing deep brain stimulation surgery. Changes in pattern produced different sensations, while preserving somatotopic representation. While most percepts were reported as 'unnatural', some stimulations produced more 'natural' sensations than others. However, the additional patterns did not elicit more 'natural' percepts than high-frequency (333 Hz) electrical stimulation. These features suggest that despite some limitations, the thalamus may be a feasible site for a somatosensory neural prosthesis and different stimulation patterns may be useful in its development.
尽管在运动假肢的开发方面取得了重大进展，但精细运动控制仍需要直观的体感反馈。在这里，我们探讨了丘脑作为体感神经假肢的部位是否可以为人类提供自然的躯体感觉。在接受深部脑刺激手术的患者中，应用了不同模式的电刺激（从丘脑尖峰序列中获得）。模式的变化产生了不同的感觉，同时保留了躯体感觉代表区。虽然大多数感觉被报告为“不自然”，但一些刺激产生的感觉比其他刺激更“自然”。然而，与高频（333 Hz）电刺激相比，附加模式并没有引起更多的“自然”感觉。这些特征表明，尽管存在一些限制，丘脑可能是体感神经假肢的一个可行部位，并且不同的刺激模式可能对其发展有用。
