Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843, USA.
Richard and Loan Hill Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, IL, 60607, USA.
Sci Rep. 2024 Nov 4;14(1):26568. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-78063-5.
This study presents a novel training technique, visual + electrotactile proprioception training (visual + EP training), which provides additional proprioceptive information via tactile channel during motor training to enhance the training effectiveness. In this study, electrotactile proprioception delivers finger aperture distance information in real-time, by mapping frequency of electrical stimulation to finger aperture distance. To test the effect of visual + EP training, twenty-four healthy subjects participated in the experiment of matching finger aperture distance with distance displayed on screen. Subjects were divided to three groups: the first group received visual training and the other two groups received visual + EP training with or without a post-training test with electrotactile proprioception. Finger aperture control error was measured before and after the training (baseline, 15-min post, 24-h post). Experimental data suggest that both training methods decreased finger aperture control error at 15-min post-training. However, at 24-h post-training, the training effect was fully retained only for the subjects who received visual + EP training, while it washed out for the subjects with visual training. Distribution analyses based on Bayesian inference suggest that the most likely mechanism of this long-term retention is proprioceptive recalibration. Such applications of artificially administered sense have the potential to improve motor control accuracy in a variety of applications.
本研究提出了一种新颖的训练技术，即视觉+电触觉本体感觉训练（visual+EP 训练），它在运动训练过程中通过触觉通道提供额外的本体感觉信息，以提高训练效果。在本研究中，电触觉本体感觉通过将电刺激的频率映射到手指开口距离来实时提供手指开口距离信息。为了测试视觉+EP 训练的效果，24 名健康受试者参与了手指开口距离与屏幕上显示的距离匹配的实验。受试者被分为三组：第一组接受视觉训练，另外两组接受视觉+EP 训练，其中两组在训练后进行电触觉本体感觉测试。在训练前后（基线、15 分钟后、24 小时后）测量手指开口控制误差。实验数据表明，两种训练方法都能在 15 分钟后训练后降低手指开口控制误差。然而，在 24 小时后训练后，只有接受视觉+EP 训练的受试者保留了训练效果，而接受视觉训练的受试者则没有保留。基于贝叶斯推断的分布分析表明，这种长期保留的最可能机制是本体感觉再校准。这种人为管理感觉的应用有可能提高各种应用中的运动控制精度。
