Sperduti Marika, Tagliamonte Nevio Luigi, Cordella Francesca, Zollo Loredana
Laboratory of Advanced Robotics and Human-Centred Technologies - CREO Lab, Universitá Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Via Àlvaro Del Portillo 21, 00128, Rome, Italy.
Sci Rep. 2025 May 4;15(1):15607. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-00026-1.
To address the low repeatability and accuracy of traditional technologies for testing the human somatosensory system, this work presents a novel mechatronic testbed. The testbed allows for the delivery of mechanical and thermal stimuli with a high spatial resolution, enabling continuous or discrete stimulation with a small fixed area and in a single experimental session. The testbed was employed to identify the mechanical/thermal innocuous and painful thresholds and the human ability to distinguish the nature of a painful stimulus, on both the hand and the forearm of 12 healthy volunteers. The results demonstrated the capability of the developed testbed to produce a range of forces that can induce different sensations (touch or pain). We found a statistical difference between the innocuous and painful thresholds, regardless of the tested anatomical spot. In this paper, a small thermal stimulation tip was appositely selected to study the reaction to a focused thermal stimulus that has been poorly investigated so far. The results highlighted a statistically significant difference between the two stimulated sites for the cool sensation and the hot pain. Moreover, the painful recognition task was sped up by the use of the developed testbed, which allowed a more fair comparison among the applied stimuli, increasing the accuracy, repeatability, and consistency when compared to the state-of-the art.
为了解决传统人体体感系统测试技术重复性低和准确性差的问题，本文提出了一种新型机电测试平台。该测试平台能够以高空间分辨率施加机械和热刺激，可在小固定区域内进行连续或离散刺激，且能在单次实验中完成。利用该测试平台，对12名健康志愿者的手部和前臂进行了机械/热无痛和疼痛阈值以及人类区分疼痛刺激性质能力的识别。结果表明，所开发的测试平台能够产生一系列可诱发不同感觉（触摸或疼痛）的力。我们发现，无论测试的解剖部位如何，无痛和疼痛阈值之间均存在统计学差异。在本文中，特意选择了一个小型热刺激尖端，以研究迄今为止研究较少的聚焦热刺激反应。结果表明，在冷觉和热痛方面，两个受刺激部位之间存在统计学上的显著差异。此外，使用所开发的测试平台加快了疼痛识别任务的速度，与现有技术相比，该测试平台能够对施加的刺激进行更公平的比较，提高了准确性、重复性和一致性。
