School of Medicine, College of Medicine, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan.
Department of Medical Education, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital at Linkou Medical Center, Taoyuan, Taiwan.
Brain Behav. 2023 Aug;13(8):e3123. doi: 10.1002/brb3.3123. Epub 2023 Jun 19.
Touch is a crucial sense for perceiving the spatial characteristics of objects. The JVP dome was developed to evaluate tactile spatial acuity using a grating orientation task. There were few studies depicting sequences and details for the entire task, including practice, training, and testing sessions. Therefore, we proposed and elaborated a protocol for the grating orientation task using the staircase method, which required fewer testing trials compared with the method of constant stimuli.
Twenty-three healthy participants were enrolled in this experiment. The JVP domes with 11 different groove widths were used. Tactile discrimination thresholds were estimated using a two-down-one-up staircase method. The experiment comprised practice, training, and testing sessions, conducted by trained examiners who performed grating stimulation on participants' index fingerpads.
All participants passed the required accuracy in the practice and training sessions. Eight transition points were obtained in the testing session for each participant. The tactile discrimination thresholds were determined from the last six transition points. We obtained the mean tactile discrimination threshold as 1.8 ± 0.75 mm (n = 23). The results demonstrated that the proposed protocol was successfully applied to assess tactile discrimination thresholds.
The present study investigated the protocol of grating orientation tasks requiring a small number of testing trials with the assurance of the task quality. The feasibility study and preliminary results indicated the potentiality of this protocol for future clinical application.
触觉是感知物体空间特征的关键感觉。JVP dome 是为了使用光栅定向任务评估触觉空间敏锐度而开发的。很少有研究描述整个任务的顺序和细节，包括练习、训练和测试阶段。因此，我们提出并详细说明了使用阶梯法进行光栅定向任务的方案，与恒定刺激法相比，该方法需要更少的测试试验。
本实验纳入了 23 名健康参与者。使用了 11 种不同槽宽的 JVP dome。使用二减一增阶梯法估计触觉分辨阈值。实验包括练习、训练和测试阶段，由经过培训的考官进行，他们在参与者的指垫上进行光栅刺激。
所有参与者都在练习和训练阶段通过了所需的准确性。每个参与者在测试阶段获得了 8 个转换点。触觉分辨阈值是从最后 6 个转换点确定的。我们得到的平均触觉分辨阈值为 1.8±0.75mm（n=23）。结果表明，所提出的方案成功应用于评估触觉分辨阈值。
本研究调查了需要较少测试试验的光栅定向任务方案，同时保证了任务质量。可行性研究和初步结果表明，该方案具有未来临床应用的潜力。
