Kind Of Sensation Research Articles

Self-powered electronic skin based on the triboelectric generator

Human skin is the largest organ, which covers the human body and provides us the mechanical stimuli to help us interact with the outer environment. Inspired from the properties of human skin, imitating of the complicated human sensation using stretchable electronic devices becomes one of the most exciting research fields due to its vast potential application fields like wearable electronics, healthcare monitoring and artificial intelligence. To mimic real human skin, the huge sensor network is required to attach the body, where it seems critical to guarantee the energy supply at the same time. Nowadays, the emerging triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), which can transduce the mechanical energy into the electrical energy based on the contact electrification and electrostatic induction, provides an attractive solution for the energy problem to work as the self-powered sensor. The self-powered sensor can generate electrical signal by itself, responsing to the stimulation from the environment without further energy supply devices. With four fundamental working modes and three main detection modes, TENG could develop versatile configurations to realize the various kinds of sensation. The mechanical compliance and stretchability together with the electrical conductance can be fulfilled beneficial from the advancement of material and micro/nano fabrication technology. In this way, the TENG based self-powered electronic skins (e-skins) have been developed with rational design to accomplish multifunctions of sensing including the pressure, position, strain, sliding and so on. It is expected that the self-powered e-skin will continue its fast development and make more progress to make the e-skin come into human life in the near future.

“It was definitely a sexual kind of sensation”: sex, sexual identity, and gender in the phenomenology of psychosis

ABSTRACT Purpose Over the past twenty years, few empirical studies have focused on manifestations of sex, sexual identity, and gender within the phenomenology of psychosis. The goal of the present analysis was to explore themes related to gender and sexuality among individuals diagnosed with a psychotic disorder. Methods We conducted a qualitative analysis of 25 in-depth phenomenological interviews and a secondary analysis of two focus groups with an additional 24 participants (total N = 49), all of whom reported past or current treatment for a psychotic disorder. Results Nearly three-quarters of interview participants and one quarter of focus group participants reported some kind of sex or gender-related content. Participants’ experiences were grouped under the following four themes: “shame and persecution,” “sexual or sexualized violence,” “power, agency, sexuality & gender,” and “positive experiences of the erotic.” Some participants described sexual experiences or content as a primary facet of their experiences, while for others it occupied a more secondary place. Many participants reported some degree of shame associated with sexual aspects of their experience. Conclusions We emphasize the clinical importance of validating and engaging with sex/sexual themes, and call for future research focused on implications vis-a-vis engagement, treatment, and social recovery.

The Sympathetic Formation of Reason and the Limits of Science

I develop an interpretation of reason using the thought of David Hume and Adam Smith. I contend that reason in Hume and Smith can plausibly be interpreted as a kind of sensation. Reason is a sensation in that it is a sentimental conception of the relationship between two objects that impels certain interpretations. Reason is developed sympathetically in experiential contexts that not only guide but constitute reason’s operation. I comment on Hume’s talk of reason in his Treatise of Human Nature to build my interpretation. I use Smith’s work in The Theory of Moral Sentiments to develop an understanding of the sympathetic formation of reason. I briefly integrate my interpretation with talk of confirmatory bias in psychology and behavioral economics. I conclude by considering implications for scientific conversation.

Pairwise Comparisons and their Contribution to Understanding Consciousness

<p>With network ANP decision structures we raise the weighted supermatrix to powers to obtain the limiting priorities that represent the answer we seek, the priorities of the alternatives of choice. With a neural structure we need eigenfuntions to represent the priorities. The firing of each neuron can be represented by an eigenfunction, an exponentially damped periodic function of period one. There are four fundamental kinds of eigenfunctions: real, complex, quaternionic and octonionic. Each kind is suitable for certain kinds of sensations and thoughts. Interpreting how they contribute to consciousness is under investigation in a paper to appear in the journal Neural Networks.</p>

Quantifying Different Tactile Sensations Evoked by Cutaneous Electrical Stimulation Using Electroencephalography Features.

Psychophysical tests and standardized questionnaires are often used to analyze tactile sensation based on subjective judgment in conventional studies. In contrast with the subjective evaluation, a novel method based on electroencephalography (EEG) is proposed to explore the possibility of quantifying tactile sensation in an objective way. The proposed experiments adopt cutaneous electrical stimulation to generate two kinds of sensations (vibration and pressure) with three grades (low/medium/strong) on eight subjects. Event-related potentials (ERPs) and event-related synchronization/desynchronization (ERS/ERD) are extracted from EEG, which are used as evaluation indexes to distinguish between vibration and pressure, and also to discriminate sensation grades. Results show that five-phase P1–N1–P2–N2–P3 deflection is induced in EEG. Using amplitudes of latter ERP components (N2 and P3), vibration and pressure sensations can be discriminated on both individual and grand-averaged ERP (p < 0.05). The grand-average ERPs can distinguish the three sensations grades, but there is no significant difference on individuals. In addition, ERS/ERD features of mu rhythm (8–13 Hz) are adopted. Vibration and pressure sensations can be discriminated on grand-average ERS/ERD (p < 0.05), but only some individuals show significant difference. The grand-averaged results show that most sensation grades can be differentiated, and most pairwise comparisons show significant difference on individuals (p < 0.05). The work suggests that ERP- and ERS/ERD-based EEG features may have potential to quantify tactile sensations for medical diagnosis or engineering applications.

Attentional focus on subjective interoceptive experience in patients with fibromyalgia

ObjectivesThe hypervigilance model of pain perception states that patients with fibromyalgia (FM) have an enhanced sensitivity to aversive and non-aversive stimuli. Few studies have focused on enhanced interoceptive sensitivity in FM. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate spontaneous sensations (SPS) in FM. DesignSPS are those tingling, tickly and other kind of sensations usually perceived on the skin during periods of rest and without any external trigger. Therefore, we have investigated SPS by requiring participants to focus attention on each hand. MethodsEighteen patients with a diagnosis of FM and 18 matched healthy participants had to direct their gaze toward the hand tested for a period of 10s. Subsequently, they had to map and report the intensity, the number and the qualitative properties of sensations arising spontaneously. Finally, participants had to fill out questionnaires assessing cognitive and affective status that may influence the interoceptive sensations feedback. ResultsPatients with FM perceived SPS as significantly more intense than controls did. Additionally, SPS were perceived by the FM group as occupying an overall larger area on the hand than those reported by controls. Importantly, entering scores of pain and catastrophism as covariates produced a relative effect on the feeling of SPS. ConclusionsThe outcome of this study supports the generalized hypervigilance model, suggesting that patients with FM have a perceptual style of amplification of non-aversive interoceptive stimulation, modulated by pain and catastrophizing. This is discussed in relationship to interoceptive awareness.

Interdisciplinarity and vocal performance in Australian Contemporary Music Theatre

Contemporary music theatre uses the voice in multifarious ways. Trained and untrained, spoken and sung, recorded and live, real and fictional voices appear alongside one another. This article examines the use of voice in three interdisciplinary works—Gretchen Miller's Inland (1999), Andrée Greenwell's Laquiem: Tales from the Mourning of the Lac Women (1999) and Justine Cooper and John Rodgers' Tulp: The Body Public (2004). Using a Deleuze – Guattarian framework, I ask three questions of each work: what does the voice do, what does it interact with, and what kind of sensations or affects does it produce?

An Analysis of Pleasure Vis-a-Vis Pain

I take up the issue of whether pleasure is a kind of sensation (in particular, a feeling episode) or not. This issue was much discussed by philosophers of the 1950's and 1960's, and apparently no resolution was reached. There were mainly two camps in the discussion: those who argued for a dispositional account, and those who favored an episodic feeling (sensational) view of pleasure. Here, relying on some recent scientific research I offer an account of pleasure which neither dispositionalizes nor sensationalizes pleasure. As is usual in the tradition, I compare pleasure with pain, and try to see its similarities and differences. I argue that pain and pleasure experiences have typically a complex phenomenology normally not so obvious in introspection. After distinguishing between affective and sensory (informational) components of these experiences, I argue that although pain experiences normally consist of both components proper to them, pleasure, in contradistinction to pain, is only the affective component of a total experience that may involve many sensations proper and cognitions. Moreover, I hold that although the so-called physical pleasure is itself not a sensation proper, it is nevertheless an episodic affective reaction (in a primitive sense) to sensations proper.

Intersubjective Properties by Which We Specify Pain, Pleasure, and Other Kinds of Mental States

How do people learn names for kinds of sensations? Wittgenstein identifies two possibilities. 1. Direct acquaintance: A person feels a sensation, notes its intrinsic character, and sets about to use the word thereafter for this sensation. 2. Outward signs: A person pins his use of the word to the sensation's outward signs. Wittgenstein rejects 1 and endorses 2. He thinks a sensation name can be learned only if people pin their use of the word to outward signs. I identify a third procedure and show we name many sensations and other kinds of mental states this way.

Usage of multisensory information in scientific data sensualization

Multisensory scientific data sensualization methods that utilize virtual reality technology permit the use of several human sensations, such as visual, acoustic, and tactile sensation to display numerical data. The purposes of multisensory data sensualization can be classified as follows: (a) representing the relationships between different kinds of data; (b) displaying data utilizing sensory integration: and (c) representing conditions using the compound image By using multisensory information, computers increase the ability to express data. However, these methods lead us to the question of which sensation should be used to display data most effectively. In this study, a multisensory data sensualization environment was developed in which color, loudness, sound frequency, and air flow pressure could be used to display scientific data. In particular, a wind sensation dislplay prototype using air flow pressure was developed to generate tactile sensation. A basic experiment was conducted on sensory interference when subjects used two kinds of sensations simultaneously. From these results, guidelines for the usage of multisensory information for each purpose is proposed.

Some recent advances in studies on J receptors.

While describing recent advances in studies on J receptors it was shown that the discovery of the principle of the relative dilution of multiple solutes in flowing fluids paved the way for developing a new method for measuring in vivo the concentration of injected drugs in the blood of the pulmonary artery. This led to the finding that excitatory solutes move out of the capillaries through a process of diffusion not through filtration. Increase in the permeability of the capillaries causes a marked increase in the responses of the J receptors to excitants by causing greater movement of the excitants to the receptors. This information is likely to yield a method for distinguishing permeability edema from hamodynamic edema in man. The most recent advance relates to the evidence showing conclusively that the sensations and dry cough produced by injecting lobeline intravenouly in man is due to the stimulation of the J receptors. The slowly and rapidly adapting receptors play little or no role in this. The nature of the sensations felt is somewhat variable, most commonly it is choking and pressure localised in the throat and upper chest. Similar sensations are felt by subjects with high altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE). From this data it is extrapolated that the same kinds of sensations that accompany breathlessness after moderate or severe exercise at sea level are also J receptor induced.

Freud and the Visual

FR E U D I S, I N T H E A B O V E quote, in the midst of recounting the long chain of free associations elaborated by his patient Dora around elements from one of her dreams. Reaching this recollection of Raphael's painting, she is (temporarily) silenced, able only to name its subject, not to explain its meaning for her. She is captivated by an image, the mobility of her thoughts turned to stone by its fascinating power. Freud himself was not immune from such enthralment to a work of visual art. Michelangelo's statue of Moses, in Rome, had caused him to stand in front of it every day for three lonely weeks,2 a devotion at least as extreme as Dora's before the Raphael. For a time, he was unable to remove himself from the scornful gaze of the prophet's large marble head, with its elaborately serpentine hair and beard. Under that implacable stare, Freud felt himself transformed into a guilty Israelite, caught cavorting round a golden calf.3 Ten years later he sought to illuminate the mythical transformation into stone effected by the Medusa's head. His brief paper on this topic remained unfinished, as if his own flow of thoughts had frozen under the Gorgon's eyes. Yet the outline of his proffered explanation remains clear. This severed head, Freud claims, is a replacement for the image of a woman's genitals (essentially those of the mother),4 its writhing hair evoking her pubic foliage. This, then, is the principal and original sight that immobilizes thought, a power which visual artists have proved able to usurp and weave into their own fabrications, just as Athena (goddess of craft and design) carried the Gorgon's head protectively before her. In Freud's work, the central drama of the visual field concerns genital sexual difference. This contrasts with Jacques Lacan's theories where (at an earlier stage of development)5 it is the image of the child's own body in a mirror that provides the founding gestalt for the formation of the Ego, whose illusory completeness thus has an intimate relation to sight. But when Freud described the Ego as first and foremost a bodily ego,6 he was referring primarily to tactile sensations (those springing from the surface of the body)7 rather than a visual image. The body, Freud asserts, is seen like any other object, but to the touch it yields two kinds of sensations.8 It is on the ground of this tactile specificity that the body, for Freud, becomes the prototype for the

Usefulness of an Aura for Classification of a First Generalized Seizure

In 67 of 149 patients with a generalized first seizure, the occurrence of some kind of sensation immediately preceding the loss of consciousness was the only clue that possibly indicated focal onset of the seizure. We studied the interobserver agreement between six neurologists regarding the interpretation of these preceding feelings as either a nonspecific symptom or an aura implicating a focal onset of the seizure. The observers also classified the seizures as generalized from onset, undetermined, or partial secondarily generalized. To assess the accuracy of the classification, we obtained a standard EEG, an EEG after partial sleep deprivation, a computed tomography (CT) scan, and a follow-up report after 1 year. The subclassification on clinical grounds of a generalized first seizure is too unreliable and probably too invalid as well to be useful in clinical practice or in epidemiologic research.

Are Pains Necessarily Unpleasant?

With apologies for asking you to do something unpleasant, I bid you think of some painful injury you suffered recently, say a cut finger, a burned hand, or a bruised leg. Concentrate on the painful sensation. No doubt it was unpleasant, more unpleasant, I fear, than your present memory of it. But was it necessarily unpleasant? In particular, was the unpleasantness an intrinsic aspect of the sensation, so that you couldn't have that very sensation without its being unpleasant? Many think so. Cf. Churchland: Pains have an intrinsic qualitative nature (a horrible one) that is revealed in introspection [Churchland, I 9 8 5, p. 24] and Pitcher: I think it is probably true that all pains are unpleasant. Are pains then necessarily unpleasant? I think it is probable that if they are all in fact unpleasant, then they are necessarily so. . [Pitcher, 1970, pp. 491-91]. I disagree. Outrageous as it sounds, I think pain sensations are not necessarily unpleasant. I think you could have exactly the same kinds of sensation as you have when you are cut, burned, or bruised, and they not be unpleasant. In this paper, I shall argue for this thesis. In the first section, I present a general picture of our perception of bodily damage and of the accompanying pain sensations. In section II, I present my theory of the contingent unpleasantness of pain, and I contrast this theory with the more traditional view that pains are inherently unpleasant. In section III, I present two arguments, drawing on actual pain phenomena, for my view. And in section IV, two objections are addressed.

How sensations get their names

There are normally four elements in any perceptual experience: a sensation or sensations, some cognitive state or states (i.e., belief states), an affective state or states (liking/disliking, among others), and some overt behavioral state or states.' The traditional theory in philosophy has been that of these four states the most important is the sensation. It is the having of a certain kind of sensation which determines what kind of perceptual experience we are undergoing. We determine what kind of sensation state we are having simply by having it, reidentify it when it recurs, and name the associated perceptual state accordingly. It is because we have visual sensations that we say we see. It is because blind people don't have these sensations that we say they don't see. It is because auditory sensations are so different from visual ones and both are so different from tactile ones, and so forth, that we say we have five (or more) kinds of perceptual experiences. And it is because the visual sensation of red is so different from the visual sensation of blue that we say one is the experience of red, the other of blue, and the like. It is because we have red sensations when confronted by certain objects that we ascribe the property "red" to those objects. Perceiving, according to this traditional theory, is essentially a sensory state. Understanding the sensation and its phenomenal properties is essential to understanding perception. I believe this picture of perceptual experiences to be quite wrong. I will argue that sensations are the least important element in perceptual experiences; that far from the nature of the sensation determining the nature of the experience, it is the nature of the experience, itself determined otherwise, that determines how we categorize the sensation: that rather than naming the sensation as a visual experience, say, simply by having it, we first name the perceptual experience, and insofar as sensations have names, they take them from the sorts of perceptual experi-

Electrophysiological monitoring of the cochlea during and after total destruction of the organ of corti.

A series of acoustically evoked potentials can be recorded from the cochlea up to the auditory cortex in guinea pigs where the organ of Corti has been totally destroyed after extensive treatment with amikacin, but where some of the spiral ganglion neurons always remain and where the vestibular receptors are only slightly affected. The cochlear responses have been monitored in guinea pigs permanently implanted with a round window electrode and receiving such treatment. The normal auditory nerve compound action potential disappears within a few days, while the very typical response (diphasic, short latency (0.3 ms) small amplitude) appears. This response then remains remarkably constant in time as far as we could observe (up to almost one year). This response might be a component of the normal response, undiscernible under normal conditions but revealed by the selective impairment of the labyrinth by amikacin, in contrast to the global effect of every other known otodestructive agent. Some basic questions still remain: which fibres are effectively stimulated (cochlear or vestibular), what are their central projections, and what kind of sensation is conceivably associated with these responses?

Can One Recognize Kinds of Private Objects?

In § 243 of the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein characterizes a private language as follows: “The individual words of this language are to refer to what can only be known to the person speaking; to his immediate private sensations. So another person cannot understand the language.” A private language is what each of us would need to talk of his own sensations if two philosophical theses were true: namely, (1) that only the person who has a sensation can know that he has it and what kind of sensation it is and (2) that since (1) is true, the names he applies to his own sensations can only be understood by him. If (1) and (2) were true, could a person classify and talk about his own sensations?

How Words Mean Kinds of Sensations

IT sometimes seems to me that what makes one of my * sensations of the kind it is is something that only who have the sensation can know. Then it seems conceivable that, no matter what evidence might think have to the contrary, the kind of sensation that mean by, for example, the term itch is not in the least like the kind that other people mean by that term. Then it seems impossible to find out for certain, really to know, whether or not and other people do mean anything like the same kind of sensation by that, or any, sensation term. cannot show another person what it is about my sensation that mean by calling it itch and he cannot show me what he means by calling one of his sensations itch. Of necessity, we can at best induce each other's meaning from similarity of concomitant external facts: behavior and circumstance. We cannot share the direct, certain path to grasping the kind each of us means by the term: that is necessarily solitary and private. Yet at the same time as feel drawn to these conclusions cannot rid myself of a sense that they are radically wrong. The hypothesis that what another person represents himself as feeling when he rubs his nose vigorously and says I can't seem to get rid of this blasted itch! is not at all like what feel that inclines me to do the same sort of thing (but is, say, just like what call in myself a stomach-ache) is, cannot help thinking, a hypothesis that cannot be seriously entertained, even as highly improbable. The way out of this familiar philosophical distress (if there is any way out) is, believe, to see more clearly what it is that enables a piece of language (a single word or a longer phrase) to mean (or specify) a kind of sensation. It is thereby that we may

Physiopathogenesis of pain

O estudo da dor é um capítulo do estudo das bases neurofisiológicas da sensação, pois a dor nada mais é que uma sensação de conteúdo desagradável originada por estímulos nocivos. Enquanto a função das outras modalidades sensoriais é informativa ou gnósica, a dor é de proteção. O estudo da fisiología da dor compreende o estudo dos receptores, dos estímulos, das vias, das estruturas do sistema nervoso central que partici- pam da fisiología da dor, da percepção dolorosa e das reações motoras e neurovegetativas. São analisados os receptores e as vias e discutidas sua especificidade, assim como a transmissão da dor rápida e lenta por vias nervosas diferentes até o córtex cerebral. É comentada a influência da atenção na intensidade da percepção dolorosa e, com base em estudos experimentais, é considerado que o circuito retículo-córtico-reticular seja indispensável para a percepção da dor. No tocante à patologia da dor é examinada a insensibilidade congênita à dor, sendo admitida a hipótese de que em algumas sinapses é modificado o esquema de impulsos que darão lugar à sensação dolorosa. É destacado o papel do lobo frontal como parte de um mecanismo pòtenciador que condiciona o sofrimento geral do paciente. A dor referida é explicada pela teoria da "convergência-projeção" de fibras viscerais com fibras cutâneas dolorosas sôbre o mesmo neurônio em algun ponto da via sensitiva. O resultado da hipofisectomia trazendo uma diminuição ou anulação da dor no câncer do seio abre debates em tôrno do papel dos hormônios na percepção dolorosa.

圧覚に及ぼす附加圧刺激の効果

Pressure and touch are often described as the same kind of sensation because they are elicited by similar mechanical stimulation. But they are quite different subjectively as well as electro-physiologically. The author discriminated between them by the difference of subjective sensation, and studied the effects of additional side-pressure applied to relatively broad surface of the body upon pressure sensation.The sensitivity of pressure sensation was measured by the number of pressure spots within a given area of the skin. In normal resting subjects, the localization of pressure spots changes from one examination to another (Fig. 1), but the number is always nearly constant (Table 1). The author studied how side-pressure by a weight given to various parts of the body surface influenced upon the pressure sensitivity in the dorsal side of right forearm, and obtained the following results:1) Side-pressure caused the decrease of pressure sensitivity in general.2) The nearer was the location of side-pressure to the test area, the greater was it's decreasing effect (Table 2).3) However, the decreasing effect of side-pressure applied to the dorsal side of right hand (distal from the test area) was less than that to the dorsal side of right forearm (proximal from the test area), even if both distances from the test area were nearly equal. This difference of the effect may be explained by the dermatome: the skin of the hand was innervated by the spinal nerve differing from that of the test area, whereas the forearm was innervated by the same nerve. But there is a problem on such simplified explanation.4) The effect increased as the size and intensity of side-pressure increased.Side-pressure given on the forearm by a cuff also depressed the pressure sensitivity. In this procedure, the asphyxia took place and the sensation subjectively differed from the former case. So, in the latter case another mechanism might be considered.5) The effect of side-pressure showed the maximum value within 1min. after pressure application (Fig. 2), regardless of intensity and location of applied pressure. Consequently, it may not be considered that the effect of side-pressure spreads around from the pressed area.6) The after-effect was recognized and it disappeared within 1min. (Fig. 3).The obtained results can not be simply explained by the pressure block of the peripheral nerve trunks. The sensitivity of pressure sensation is depressed also by the other stimulation of the central nervous system, especially the effects of stimuli, depressing the clarity of consciousness, are very similar to side-pressure's. It may be followed that side-pressure on the skin causes the inhibitory effect on the central nervous system including the cerebral cortex.It is concluded that the depression of pressure sensitivity is not of peripheral origin, such as pressure nerve block, but results from the induction in a level or levels of the central nervous system.