Abstract
Noisy galvanic vestibular stimulation (nGVS) has been shown to improve dynamic walking stability, affect postural responses, enhance balance in healthy subjects, and influence motor performance in individuals with Parkinson’s disease. Although the studies to fully characterize the effect of nGVS are still ongoing, stochastic resonance theory which states that the addition of noisy signal may enhance a weak sensory input signals transmission in a non-linear system may provide a possible explanation for the observed positive effects of nGVS. This study explores the effect of nGVS on fine tracking behavior in healthy subjects. Ten healthy participants performed a computer-based visuomotor task by controlling an object with a joystick to follow an amplitude-modulated signal path while simultaneously receiving a sham or pink noise nGVS. The stimulation was generated to have a zero-mean, linearly detrended 1/f-type power spectrum, Gaussian distribution within 0.1–10 Hz range, and a standard deviation (SD) set to 90% based on each participant’s cutaneous threshold value. Results show that simultaneous nGVS delivery statistically improved the tracking performance with a decreased root-mean-squared error of 5.71±6.20% (mean±SD), a decreased time delay of 11.88±9.66% (mean±SD), and an increased signal-to-noise ratio of 2.93% (median, interquartile range (IQR) 3.31%). This study showed evidence that nGVS may be beneficial in improving sensorimotor performance during a fine motor tracking task requiring fine wrist movement in healthy subjects. Further research with a more comprehensive subset of tasks is required to fully characterize the effects of nGVS on fine motor skills.
Highlights
Visuomotor skill plays an important role in performing daily activities
Results show significant positive improvement in decreasing the root-mean-square error (RMSE) and the time delay with Noisy galvanic vestibular stimulation (nGVS) with a mean of 5.71±6.20% p = .017 and 11.88±9.66% p = .004 respectively
signal to noise ratio (SNR) measures had a normal distribution but one significant outlier, the Wilcoxon’s sign rank test was employed, and results showed a significant improvement with a median difference of 2.93%, interquartile range 3.31%, p =
Summary
Visuomotor skill plays an important role in performing daily activities. This skill requires combining sensory information across modalities and transforming them into the appropriate motor response [1]. In the occupational field, robotic teleoperation has been increasingly used to perform tasks that require precision as well as to overcome geographical barriers such as in telesurgery, or in situations where the tasks pose dangers to humans if they are physically present in the field [2] Some examples of the latter include bomb disposal/mine clearing robots [3], repair robots in space [4], and nuclear material and hazardous waste handling robots [5,6]. Many of these teleoperated robotic applications may require precise control of fine motor movements from the human operator to effectively accomplish a task
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