Liu Yuan, Wang Wenjie, Xu Weiguo, Cheng Qian, Ming Dong
Academy of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China, 92 Weijin Road, Nankai District, Tianjin, P. R. China.
Tianjin Hospital, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China, 406 South Jiefang Road, Hexi District, Tianjin, P. R. China.
Int J Neural Syst. 2021 Dec;31(12):2150049. doi: 10.1142/S0129065721500490. Epub 2021 Oct 12.
Humans obtain characteristic information such as texture and weight of external objects, relying on the brain's integration and classification of tactile information; however, the decoding mechanism of multi-level tactile information is relatively elusive from the temporal sequence. In this paper, nonvariant frequency, along with the variant pulse width of electrotactile stimulus, was performed to generate multi-level pressure sensation. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured to investigate the mechanism of whole temporal tactile processing. Five ERP components, containing P100-N140-P200-N200-P300, were observed. By establishing the relationship between stimulation parameters and ERP component amplitudes, we found the following: (1) P200 is the most significant component for distinguishing multi-level tactile sensations; (2) P300 is correlated well with the subjective judgment of tactile sensation. The temporal sequence of brain topographies was implemented to clarify the spatiotemporal characteristics of the tactile process, which conformed to the serial processing model in neurophysiology and cortical network response area described by fMRI. Our results can help further clarify the mechanism of tactile sequential processing, which can be applied to improve the tactile BCI performance, sensory enhancement, and clinical diagnosis for doctors to evaluate the tactile process disorders by examining the temporal ERP components.
人类依靠大脑对触觉信息的整合和分类来获取外部物体的质地和重量等特征信息；然而，从时间序列来看，多级触觉信息的解码机制相对难以捉摸。在本文中，采用不变频率以及变化的电触觉刺激脉冲宽度来产生多级压力感觉。通过测量事件相关电位（ERP）来研究整个时间触觉处理的机制。观察到五个ERP成分，包括P100-N140-P200-N200-P300。通过建立刺激参数与ERP成分幅度之间的关系，我们发现：（1）P200是区分多级触觉感觉的最重要成分；（2）P300与触觉感觉的主观判断密切相关。通过实施脑地形图的时间序列来阐明触觉过程的时空特征，这符合神经生理学中的串行处理模型以及功能磁共振成像（fMRI）所描述的皮质网络反应区域。我们的结果有助于进一步阐明触觉序列处理的机制，可应用于改善触觉脑机接口性能、感觉增强以及临床诊断，以便医生通过检查ERP时间成分来评估触觉过程障碍。
