Wang Fa, Lakshminarayanan Kishor, Slota Gregory P, Seo Na Jin, Webster John G
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1550 Engineering Drive, Madison WI 53706, USA.
Physiol Meas. 2015 Jan;36(1):N15-21. doi: 10.1088/0967-3334/36/1/N15. Epub 2014 Dec 11.
Recently, the application of vibrotactile noise to the wrist or back of the hand has been shown to enhance fingertip tactile sensory perception (Enders et al 2013), supporting the potential for an assistive device worn at the wrist, that generates minute vibrations to help the elderly or patients with sensory deficit. However, knowledge regarding the detailed physiological mechanism behind this sensory improvement in the central nervous system, especially in the human brain, is limited, hindering progress in development and use of such assistive devices. To enable investigation of the impact of vibrotactile noise on sensorimotor brain activity in humans, a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-compatible vibrotactile system was developed to provide vibrotactile noise during an MRI of the brain. The vibrotactile system utilizes a remote (outside the MR room) signal amplifier which provides a voltage from -40 to +40 V to drive a 12 mm diameter piezoelectric vibrator (inside the MR room). It is portable and is found to be MRI-compatible which enables its use for neurologic investigation with MRI. The system was also found to induce an improvement in fingertip tactile sensation, consistent with the previous study.
最近，已证明对手腕或手背施加振动触觉噪声可增强指尖触觉感知（恩德斯等人，2013年），这支持了佩戴在手腕上的辅助设备的潜力，该设备可产生微小振动以帮助老年人或有感觉缺陷的患者。然而，关于中枢神经系统，尤其是人类大脑中这种感觉改善背后详细生理机制的知识有限，这阻碍了此类辅助设备的开发和使用进展。为了能够研究振动触觉噪声对人类感觉运动脑活动的影响，开发了一种与磁共振成像（MRI）兼容的振动触觉系统，以便在脑部MRI期间提供振动触觉噪声。该振动触觉系统利用一个远程（磁共振室外部）信号放大器，该放大器提供从-40到+40 V的电压来驱动一个直径12 mm的压电振动器（磁共振室内）。它便于携带，并且被发现与MRI兼容，这使得它能够用于MRI神经学研究。该系统还被发现可改善指尖触觉，这与之前的研究一致。
