Sclocco Roberta, Citi Luca, Garcia Ronald G, Cerutti Sergio, Bianchi Anna M, Kuo Braden, Napadow Vitaly, Barbieri Riccardo
Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2015;2015:4683-6. doi: 10.1109/EMBC.2015.7319439.
The skin conductance (SC) signal is one of the most important non-invasive indirect measures of autonomic outflow. Several mathematical models have been proposed in the literature to characterize specific SC features. In this work, we present a method for the estimation of central control of sudomotor nerve impulse (SMI) function using SC. The method is based on a differential formulation decomposed into two first order differential equations. We validate our estimation framework by applying it on an experimental protocol where eleven motion sickness-prone subjects were exposed to a nauseogenic visual stimulus while SC and fMRI signals were recorded. Our results show an expected significant increase in the mean amplitude of SMI peaks during the highest reported nausea, as well as a decreasing trend during recovery, which was not evident for skin conductance level. Importantly, SMI/fMRI analysis found a negative association between SMI and fMRI signal in orbitofrontal, dorsolateral prefrontal, and posterior insula cortices, consistent with previous studies correlating brain fMRI and microneurographic signals.
皮肤电导率（SC）信号是自主神经输出最重要的非侵入性间接测量指标之一。文献中已经提出了几种数学模型来描述特定的SC特征。在这项工作中，我们提出了一种使用SC估计汗腺运动神经冲动（SMI）功能中枢控制的方法。该方法基于分解为两个一阶微分方程的微分公式。我们通过将其应用于一个实验方案来验证我们的估计框架，在该方案中，11名易患晕动病的受试者在记录SC和功能磁共振成像（fMRI）信号的同时，暴露于致呕视觉刺激下。我们的结果显示，在报告的最高恶心程度期间，SMI峰值的平均幅度有预期的显著增加，以及恢复期间的下降趋势，这在皮肤电导率水平上并不明显。重要的是，SMI/fMRI分析发现，在眶额、背外侧前额叶和后岛叶皮质中，SMI与fMRI信号之间存在负相关，这与之前将脑fMRI和微神经图信号相关联的研究一致。
