Department of Engineering, Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Roma, Italy.
Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology, University College London, Gower Street, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2018 Nov 16;13(11):e0207145. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0207145. eCollection 2018.
Facial somatosensory feedback is critical for breastfeeding in the first days of life. However, its development has never been investigated in humans. Here we develop a new interface to measure facial somatosensation in newborn infants. The novel system allows to measure neuronal responses to touching the face of the subject by synchronously recording scalp electroencephalography (EEG) and the force applied by the experimenter. This is based on a dedicated force transducer that can be worn on the finger underneath a clinical nitrile glove and linked to a commercial EEG acquisition system. The calibrated device measures the pressure applied by the investigator when tapping the skin concurrently with the resulting brain response. With this system, we were able to demonstrate that taps of 192 mN (mean) reliably elicited facial somatosensory responses in 7 pre-term infants. These responses had a time course similar to those following limbs stimulation, but more lateral topographical distribution consistent with body representations in primary somatosensory areas. The method introduced can therefore be used to reliably measure facial somatosensory responses in vulnerable infants.
面部躯体感觉反馈对于生命最初几天的母乳喂养至关重要。然而，其在人类中的发展从未被研究过。在这里，我们开发了一种新的接口来测量新生儿的面部躯体感觉。该新型系统允许通过同步记录头皮脑电图 (EEG) 和实验者施加的力，来测量触摸对象面部时的神经元反应。这是基于一个专用的力传感器，可以戴在临床丁腈手套下的手指上，并与商业 EEG 采集系统相连。校准后的设备可测量调查人员在敲击皮肤时施加的压力以及由此产生的大脑反应。使用该系统，我们能够证明，192 mN（平均值）的轻拍可靠地在 7 名早产儿中引发了面部躯体感觉反应。这些反应的时程与肢体刺激后的反应相似，但更偏向于身体在初级躯体感觉区域的代表的横向拓扑分布。因此，所介绍的方法可用于可靠地测量脆弱婴儿的面部躯体感觉反应。
