Rincon-Gonzalez L, Naufel S N, Santos V J, Helms Tillery S
School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA.
J Mot Behav. 2012;44(6):391-401. doi: 10.1080/00222895.2012.746281.
Neuroprosthetic limbs, regardless of their sophisticated motor control, require sensory feedback to viably interact with the environment. Toward that aim, the authors examined interrelationships between tactile and proprioceptive sensations. Through human psychophysics experiments, they evaluated error patterns of subjects estimating hand location in a horizontal 2-dimensional workspace under 3 tactile conditions. While tactile cues did not significantly affect the structure of the pattern of errors, touching the workspace reduced estimation errors. During neurophysiological experiments, a macaque grasped textured objects using 2 hand postures. Sensory coding showed dependence on both roughness of the manipulandum and posture. In summary, the authors suggest that tactile sensations underlying haptics are processed in a stable spatial reference frame provided by a proprioceptive system, and that tactile and proprioceptive inputs can be encoded simultaneously by individual cells. Such insights will be useful for providing stable, adaptive sensory feedback for neuroprosthetics.
神经假肢肢体，无论其运动控制多么复杂，都需要感觉反馈才能与环境进行有效的交互。为了实现这一目标，作者研究了触觉和本体感觉之间的相互关系。通过人体心理物理学实验，他们评估了受试者在三种触觉条件下估计水平二维工作空间中手部位置的误差模式。虽然触觉线索对误差模式的结构没有显著影响，但触摸工作空间可减少估计误差。在神经生理学实验中，一只猕猴用两种手部姿势抓握有纹理的物体。感觉编码显示既依赖于操作对象的粗糙度，也依赖于姿势。总之，作者认为触觉中潜在的触觉感受是在本体感觉系统提供的稳定空间参考框架中进行处理的，并且触觉和本体感觉输入可以由单个细胞同时编码。这些见解将有助于为神经假肢提供稳定、适应性的感觉反馈。
