Document Type
Article
Language
eng
Publication Date
2019
Publisher
Springer Nature
Source Publication
Experimental Brain Research
Source ISSN
0014-4819
Abstract
Body–machine interfaces (BMIs) provide a non-invasive way to control devices. Vibrotactile stimulation has been used by BMIs to provide performance feedback to the user, thereby reducing visual demands. To advance the goal of developing a compact, multivariate vibrotactile display for BMIs, we performed two psychophysical experiments to determine the acuity of vibrotactile perception across the arm. The first experiment assessed vibration intensity discrimination of sequentially presented stimuli within four dermatomes of the arm (C5, C7, C8, and T1) and on the ulnar head. The second experiment compared vibration intensity discrimination when pairs of vibrotactile stimuli were presented simultaneously vs. sequentially within and across dermatomes. The first experiment found a small but statistically significant difference between dermatomes C7 and T1, but discrimination thresholds at the other three locations did not differ. Thus, while all tested dermatomes of the arm and hand could serve as viable sites of vibrotactile stimulation for a practical BMI, ideal implementations should account for small differences in perceptual acuity across dermatomes. The second experiment found that sequential delivery of vibrotactile stimuli resulted in better intensity discrimination than simultaneous delivery, independent of whether the pairs were located within the same dermatome or across dermatomes. Taken together, our results suggest that the arm may be a viable site to transfer multivariate information via vibrotactile feedback for body–machine interfaces. However, user training may be needed to overcome the perceptual disadvantage of simultaneous vs. sequentially presented stimuli.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Shah, Valay; Casadio, Maura; Scheidt, Robert A.; and Mrotek, Leigh A., "Spatial and Temporal Influences on Discrimination of Vibrotactile Stimuli on The Arm" (2019). Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications. 608.
https://epublications.marquette.edu/bioengin_fac/608
ADA Accessible Version
Comments
Published version. Experimental Brain Research, Vol. 237, (2019): 2075-2086. DOI. © 2019 Springer Nature. Used with permission.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.