Midfrontal theta oscillation encodes haptic delay

Haneen Alsuradi,Mohamad Eid,Wanjoo Park

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-95631-1

Haneen Alsuradi, Mohamad Eid + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-95631-1

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Abstract

Haptic technologies aim to simulate tactile or kinesthetic interactions with a physical or virtual environment in order to enhance user experience and/or performance. However, due to stringent communication and computational needs, the user experience is influenced by delayed haptic feedback. While delayed feedback is well understood in the visual and auditory modalities, little research has systematically examined the neural correlates associated with delayed haptic feedback. In this paper, we used electroencephalography (EEG) to study sensory and cognitive neural correlates caused by haptic delay during passive and active tasks performed using a haptic device and a computer screen. Results revealed that theta power oscillation was significantly higher at the midfrontal cortex under the presence of haptic delay. Sensory correlates represented by beta rebound were found to be similar in the passive task and different in the active task under the delayed and synchronous conditions. Additionally, the event related potential (ERP) P200 component is modulated under the haptic delay condition during the passive task. The P200 amplitude significantly reduced in the last 20% of trials during the passive task and in the absence of haptic delay. Results suggest that haptic delay could be associated with increased cognitive control processes including multi-sensory divided attention followed by conflict detection and resolution with an earlier detection during the active task. Additionally, haptic delay tends to generate greater perceptual attention that does not significantly decay across trials during the passive task.

Highlights

Haptic technologies aim to simulate tactile or kinesthetic interactions with a physical or virtual environment in order to enhance user experience and/or performance
At the contralateral sensorimotor region of interest (ROI), a post-movement beta rebound time-locked to the haptic collision event was observed
It can be observed that even though the rebound is time-locked to the haptic collision event in the active task, the rate at which the beta rebound occurred in the synchronous condition is slower than that of the delayed condition

Summary

Introduction

Haptic technologies aim to simulate tactile or kinesthetic interactions with a physical or virtual environment in order to enhance user experience and/or performance. Neurohaptics is an emerging field that strives to understand the complex neural representations provoked in response to touch s timulation[9] Neural imaging techniques such as fMRI and EEG offer the potential to examine brain activities associated with haptic delay to provide objective, real-time assessment of the haptic d elay[9,10]. An early study found that theta oscillation at the midfrontal region is closely related to cognitive control processes that are needed to evaluate the stream of information from perceived stimuli and prepare the brain’s response a ccordingly[18] These processes include multisensory divided attention[19], conflict detection and resolution and selective suppression[20]. In multimodal interaction such as audiovisual, increased central theta power was observed following incongruent audiovisual stimuli compared with congruent audiovisual s timuli[21]

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