Kinesthetic Information Research Articles

Tactile Working Memory Outside our Hands

The haptic perception of 2D images is believed to make heavy demands on working memory. During active exploration, we need to store not only the current sensory information, but also to integrate this with kinesthetic information of the hand and fingers in order to generate a coherent percept. The question that arises is how much tactile memory we have for tactile stimuli that are no longer in contact with the skin during active touch? We examined working memory using a tactile change detection task with active exploration. Each trial contained two stimulation arrays. Participants engaged in unconstrained active tactile exploration of an array of vibrotactile stimulators. In half of the trials, one of the vibrating tactors that was active in the first stimulation turned off and another started vibrating in the second stimulation. Participants had to report whether the arrays were the same or different. Performance was near-perfect when up to two tactors were used and dropped linearly as the number of the ...

Attention to the hands disrupts skilled typewriting: The role of vision in producing the disruption

Drawing typists' attention to their hands by asking them to type only letters assigned to the left or the right hand disrupts their performance, slowing the rate of typing and increasing errors. In this article we test the hypothesis that slowing occurs because typists watch their hands to determine which hand types which letter. Skilled typists were cued to type letters of one hand or of both hands while they could view their hands on the keyboard and while their vision was blocked by a box placed over the keyboard. Typing was slower when letters of one hand were typed than when letters of both hands were typed, and the slowing was greater when the hands were covered than when they were not. This supports the hypothesis that slowing occurs because typists watch their hands. However, typists were able to type letters of one hand when the keyboard was covered, so typists must have monitored kinesthetic information as well.

Perceived Object Stability Depends on Multisensory Estimates of Gravity

BackgroundHow does the brain estimate object stability? Objects fall over when the gravity-projected centre-of-mass lies outside the point or area of support. To estimate an object's stability visually, the brain must integrate information across the shape and compare its orientation to gravity. When observers lie on their sides, gravity is perceived as tilted toward body orientation, consistent with a representation of gravity derived from multisensory information. We exploited this to test whether vestibular and kinesthetic information affect this visual task or whether the brain estimates object stability solely from visual information.Methodology/Principal FindingsIn three body orientations, participants viewed images of objects close to a table edge. We measured the critical angle at which each object appeared equally likely to fall over or right itself. Perceived gravity was measured using the subjective visual vertical. The results show that the perceived critical angle was significantly biased in the same direction as the subjective visual vertical (i.e., towards the multisensory estimate of gravity).Conclusions/SignificanceOur results rule out a general explanation that the brain depends solely on visual heuristics and assumptions about object stability. Instead, they suggest that multisensory estimates of gravity govern the perceived stability of objects, resulting in objects appearing more stable than they are when the head is tilted in the same direction in which they fall.

The anisotropy of perceived distance: The eyes story

The aim of this study is to determine whether the eye position shift changes perceived distance, that is, whether kinesthetic information from eye muscles affects distance perception. Two experiments were done, in a dark room (reduced-cue situation), with 27 participants, psychology undergraduates. Participants had a task to match distances of three stimuli, on three viewing directions, 0, 30 and 60 deg rees relative to the body. Head and body of participants were fixed, and they changed viewing directions only by moving their eyes. Stimuli were 7cm

The Use of a Tactile-Vision Sensory Substitution System as an Augmentative Tool for Individuals with Visual Impairments

The promise of novel technological strategies and solutions to assist persons with visual impairments (that is, those who are blind or have low vision) is frequently discussed and held to be widely beneficial in countless applications and daily activities. One such approach involving tactile-vision sensory substitution modality as mechanism to compensate for vision loss likewise holds such promise. It has been suggested that the use of sensory substitution modality is an obvious and historically used mechanism of compensation for visual impairment and can be readily pointed to in number of rudimentary, yet highly effective, strategies that are in use. Perhaps the most established and successful example of sensory substitution strategy that targets persons who are visually impaired is the use of braille. Information that is typically acquired visually through reading is, instead, acquired through the fingertips and interpreted in the brain (Bach-y-Rita & Kercel, 2003). Another obvious sensory substitution approach that is commonly used to provide additional environmental information to travelers who are visually impaired is the use of long cane (Bach-y-Rita & Kercel, 2003). Although long cane has the potential to allow variety of proprioceptive and kinesthetic information to be conveyed to traveler (the material, slope, and elevation of the walking surface and the location and dimension of obstacles and openings along path), it clearly meets the criteria of sensory substitution strategy (Blasch, Wiener, & Welsh, 1997). A convincing argument can be made that adaptive strategies and techniques that are often taught to individuals with visual impairments involve sensory substitution component. Previous efforts to develop portable device to aid individuals who are visually impaired to acquire printed materials and images started with the Optacon (Optical-to-Tactile-Converter), originally manufactured by Telesensory Systems. As described in an owner's manual from 1978, the Optacon was a portable reading aid for the blind that operates by use of miniature camera, an electronics unit and tactile simulator array that converts printed words and images into tactile images that blind person can feel with one finger (Optacon Owner's Manual, 1978). Although the Optacon is no longer manufactured or commercially available, loyal base of users of this device continue to tout the advantages and utility of this platform for acquiring written information. The device examined in the study reported here is hardly novel from the point of view of being an augmentative tool to aid in the acquisition of environmental information, but does represent an intriguing and surprisingly intuitive interface for providing information to the user. The BrainPort vision device system--Wicab, BP-WAVE 2007--consists of postage stampsized 25 x 25 electrotactile electrode array for the tongue (625 individual pinhead-sized points of contact arranged across the face of the array), control box, digital video camera, and handheld controller for zoom and contrast inversion (see Figure 1). BrainPort technology converts images that are captured through digital camera and presents this information to the brain via electrical stimulation of the tongue through the electrotactile electrode array, augmenting normal sensory channels with this additional spatial information (Arnoldussen & Hogle, 2008). Although this particular sensorysubstitution platform may at first appear unorthodox, numerous previous studies have supported the use of the tongue as sensory channel for receiving input (Bach-y-Rita, 1967, 1972, 2005; Bach-y-Rita, Collins, Saunders, White, & Scadden, 1969; Bach-yRita, Kaczmarek, Tyler, & Garcia-Lara, 1998). Individuals who use this device have described the experience of the electrotactile electrode array as feeling of effervescent bubbles mildly buzzing on the tongue. …

A precision-of-information explanation of sensory dominance

Subjects identified letters or judged the sizes of squares presented visually and/or haptically. The stimuli were presented as spatiotemporal patterns (pre-recorded movement pathways) matched to avoid favouring either mode. Visual explorers were shown pathways as either a 1 cm line tracing out the shape (moving window condition) or as a line moving behind a stationary 1 cm window (stationary window condition). Haptic explorers| fingertips were guided along raised-line pathways (moving window condition) or felt the shapes, depicted in raised-line drawings, moving under their static fingertip (stationary window condition). Visual and haptic performance did not differ but the moving window conditions yielded lower latencies than stationary window conditions in both modes. When squares of different sizes were presented simultaneously to vision and kinesthesis, vision was dominant. The reverse was true when tactile (cutaneous) input was added to the kinesthetic information. These findings support the optimal integration hypothesis in that precision of information is critically related to dominance, and they challenge the concept of sensory capture as a modality-specific phenomenon.

Incorporating Feedback from Multiple Sensory Modalities Enhances Brain–Machine Interface Control

The brain typically uses a rich supply of feedback from multiple sensory modalities to control movement in healthy individuals. In many individuals, these afferent pathways, as well as their efferent counterparts, are compromised by disease or injury resulting in significant impairments and reduced quality of life. Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) offer the promise of recovered functionality to these individuals by allowing them to control a device using their thoughts. Most current BMI implementations use visual feedback for closed-loop control; however, it has been suggested that the inclusion of additional feedback modalities may lead to improvements in control. We demonstrate for the first time that kinesthetic feedback can be used together with vision to significantly improve control of a cursor driven by neural activity of the primary motor cortex (MI). Using an exoskeletal robot, the monkey's arm was moved to passively follow a cortically controlled visual cursor, thereby providing the monkey with kinesthetic information about the motion of the cursor. When visual and proprioceptive feedback were congruent, both the time to successfully reach a target decreased and the cursor paths became straighter, compared with incongruent feedback conditions. This enhanced performance was accompanied by a significant increase in the amount of movement-related information contained in the spiking activity of neurons in MI. These findings suggest that BMI control can be significantly improved in paralyzed patients with residual kinesthetic sense and provide the groundwork for augmenting cortically controlled BMIs with multiple forms of natural or surrogate sensory feedback.

Development of a miniature tunable stiffness display using MR fluids for haptic application

For realistic haptic interaction, both tactile and kinesthetic information should be simultaneously conveyed to users. Haptic display units generally require miniaturization of tactile and kinesthetic modules, particularly, in small consumer electronic products (such as hand-held devices). While minimizing tactile modules is relatively easy, it is quite challenging to minimize the size of kinesthetic actuators for hand-held device applications. In an effort to address this issue, this study investigates a miniature tunable stiffness display. Actuated by MR fluids, the stiffness display is intended to provide kinesthetic information to users in small electric devices. In this study, a prototype stiffness display was designed and constructed, which consists of three parts: (1) an elastic returning part (which generates an elastic force), (2) a stiffness tuning part (which creates a resistive force), and (3) a PDMS membrane reservoir part (which serves as a repository for the MR fluids). In designing the prototype, the three operating modes of MR fluids (i.e., flow mode, direct shear mode, and squeeze mode) are used in order to maximize the resistive force generated by the fluids in a given size of the device. The stiffness display was then fabricated by using the MEMS technology as well as precision machining. For performance evaluation of the prototype, a micro stage, which is equipped with a precision load cell, was used. Using the micro stage, the stiffness changes of the display were measured by varying indented depth discretely (0.5, 1, and 1.5 mm). The results show that the stiffness change rate is nearly 30%, which is sufficient to create a stiffness sensation, for all indented depths considered in this study. The results further show that the proposed display can offer a range of stiffness change that can be conveyed to human operators.

Visual and haptic influence on perception of stimulus size

In six experiments, subjects judged the sizes of squares that were presented visually and/or haptically, in unimodal or bimodal conditions. We were interested in which mode most affected size judgments in the bimodal condition when the squares presented to each mode actually differed in size. Three factors varied: whether haptic exploration was passive or active, whether the choice set from which the subjects selected their responses was visual or haptic, and whether cutaneous information was provided in addition to kinesthetic information. To match the task for each mode, visual presentations consisted of a cursor that moved along a square pathway to correspond to the haptic experience of successive segments revealed during exploration. We found that the visual influence on size judgments was greater than the influence of haptics when the haptic experience involved only kinesthesis, passive movement, and a visual choice set. However, when cutaneous input was added to kinesthetic information, size judgments were most influenced by the haptic mode. The results support hypotheses of sensory integration, rather than capture of one sense by the other.

Development of virtual reality-based universal design review system

When designing universal design products or their interfaces, it is necessary to have knowledge about the environment in which the target product is going to be used. Product development should consider the interaction between the envisaged product or a demo product with the same functions on the one hand, and the users on the other, as well as observing the everyday activities of typical users, understanding the procedures and methods for using the product and subsequently pinpointing the areas which are problematic or in need of improvement. To evaluate whether the designed product is easy to use, and to improve its usability, it is also essential to record the perceptions of the people, the movement characteristics, the operability, any mental or physical stress, and so on. There is a need for products and environments which are easily applicable to various people and utilizational setups. In this paper, we present the development of a tangible design review system which makes use of virtual reality technology to display a close model of the actual product, making readily available not only visual information but also the perception of volume and weight through the fusion of kinesthetic information, enabling many people to communicate easily while experiencing this virtual reality. Furthermore, the design review of universal design products which makes use of this system will be discussed.

Kinesthetic Compensation for Sensorimotor Rearrangements

ABSTRACT The authors report a new sensorimotor phenomenon in which participants use hand-sensed kinesthetic information to compensate for rotational sensorimotor rearrangements. This compensation benefits from conscious awareness and is related to hand posture. The technique can reduce control inefficiency with some misalignments by as much as 64%. The results support Y. Guiard's (1987) suggestion that in bimanual tasks one hand provides an operational frame of reference for the other hand as in a closed kinematic chain. Results with right-handed participants show that the right and left hands are equally effective at providing such a cue. A constant-angular-targeting-error model, similar to that used for hand movements by H. Cunningham and I. Vardi (1990) and for walking by S. K. Rushton, J. M. Harris, M. R. Lloyd, and J. P. Wann (1998), is used to model the trajectories of targeting hand movements demonstrating the phenomenon. The model provides a natural parameter of the error.

Imagem corporal e deficiência visual: um estudo bibliográfico das relações entre a cegueira e o desenvolvimento da imagem corporal

The main goal of this study was to put together important information about body image development in blind people to help physical education teachers who work with this population. In order to achieve this goal, we conducted a search for articles published between 1990 and 2004. We analyzed and interpreted the most important aspects of each paper. Blindness is responsible for a poor and confusing body image, which is formed mainly by tactile, kinesthetic and audible information. Blind children tend to present self-concept and self-esteem levels related to those they believe their parents’ are, and also related to the quality of their social life.

Line Bisection and Cerebellar Damage

The cerebellum plays a role in higher-order cognitive processes, although the evidence concerning spatial cognition is not definite. To investigate the role of the cerebellum in setting the midpoint of a horizontal line and to assess the role of visual monitoring of the movement of the upper limb. Twelve patients, 6 with left-sided and 6 with right-sided cerebellar damage, and 12 control participants, marked the midpoint of horizontal lines with their left or right hand, under conditions of present versus absent visual control of the movement of the upper limb. When visual feedback was available, the patients' accuracy was comparable to that of control participants with a minor leftward bias. Without visual feedback, controls and right-sided cerebellar patients exhibited a rightward bias. Conversely, left-sided cerebellar patients still showed a leftward bias. The leftward bias may be related to the visual monitoring of the movement of the upper limb, being reversed when this is not available. Under these conditions, kinesthetic information becomes more relevant, and may contribute to the rightward bias. This effect is not shown by left cerebellar patients, possibly due to the disconnection between the left cerebellum and the right hemisphere, involved in spatial cognition.

Visuomotor Adaptation Does Not Recalibrate Kinesthetic Sense of Felt Hand Path

Motor control relies on multiple sources of information. To estimate the position and motion of the hand, the brain uses both vision and body-position (proprioception and kinesthesia) senses from sensors in the muscles, tendons, joints, and skin. Although performance is better when more than one sensory modality is present, visuomotor adaptation suggests that people tend to rely much more on visual information of the hand to guide their arm movements to targets, even when the visual information and kinesthetic information about the hand motion are in conflict. The aim of this study is to test whether adapting hand movements in response to false visual feedback of the hand will result in the change or recalibration of the kinesthetic sense of hand motion. The advantage of this cross-sensory recalibration would ensure on-line consistency between the senses. To test this, we mapped participants' sensitivity to tilted and curved hand paths and then examined whether adapting their hand movements in response to false visual feedback affected their felt sense of hand path. We found that participants could accurately estimate hand path directions and curvature after adapting to false visual feedback of their hand when reaching to targets. Our results suggest that although vision can override kinesthesia to recalibrate arm motor commands, it does not recalibrate the kinesthetic sense of hand path geometry.

Position sense asymmetry

Asymmetries in upper limb position sense have been explained in the context of a left limb advantage derived from differences in hemispheric specialization in the processing of kinesthetic information. However, it is not clearly understood how the comparison of perceptual information associated with passive limb displacement and the corresponding matching movement resulting from the execution of a motor command contributes to these differences. In the present study, upper limb position sense was investigated in 12 right-hand-dominant young adults performing wrist position matching tasks which varied in terms of interhemispheric transfer, memory retrieval and whether the reference position was provided by the same or opposite limb. Right and left hand absolute matching errors were similar when the reference and matching positions were produced by the same hand but were 36% greater when matching the reference position with the opposite hand. When examining the constant errors generated from matching movements made with the same hand that provided the reference, the right and left hand matching errors (approximately 3 degrees) were similar. However, when matching with the opposite limb, a large overshoot (P < 0.05) characterized the error when the right hand matched the left hand reference while a large undershoot (P < 0.05) characterized the error when the left hand matched the right hand reference. The overshoot and undershoot were of similar magnitude (approximately 4 degrees). Although asymmetries in the central processing of proprioceptive information such as interhemispheric transfer may exist, the present study suggests that asymmetries in position sense predominantly result from a difference in the "gain of the respective proprioceptive sensory-motor loops". This new hypothesis is strongly supported by a dual-linear model representing the right and left hand sensory-motor systems as well as morphological and physiological data.

Magnitude estimation of softness

The human capacity to estimate the magnitude of softness of silicone rubber disks of differing compliance was studied under experimental conditions that altered the mode of contact. Subjects were able to scale softness regardless of whether they (1) actively indented each specimen by tapping or pressing it with the finger pad, (2) received passive indentation of the finger pad by each specimen via a force controlled tactile stimulator, thus eliminating kinesthetic cues, or (3) actively indented each specimen with a stylus that was manipulated either by tapping with one finger, or held by two fingers in a precision grip, thereby removing tactile cues provided by direct mechanical contact between the finger pad and specimen. Ratings of softness were independent of moderate variations in peak compressional force and force-rate. Additionally, functions for scaling softness were affected by the mode of contact; the slopes of the functions were greater in the tasks with a complete complement of compliance cues. When subjects were asked to classify objects as either hard or soft, specimens were classified as soft if the compliance were greater than that of the human finger. This suggests that the classification of softness depends on whether the object conforms to the body, and that tactile information about the spatial profile of object deformation is sufficient for the magnitude scaling of softness. But typically, kinesthetic information about the magnitude of object displacement, along with contact vibratory cues is also used while judging softness especially in the absence of direct skin contact with the object when using a tool.

Relationship between Upper Extremity Kinesthetic Sense and Writing Performance by Students with Low Vision

Kinesthetic sense plays an important role in writing. Children with low vision lack sensory input from the environment given their loss of vision. This study assessed the effect of upper extremity kinesthetic sense on writing function in two groups, one of students with low vision (9 girls and 11 boys, 9.4 +/- 1.9 yr. of age) and one of sighted students (10 girls and 10 boys, 10.1 +/- 1.3 yr. of age). All participants were given the Kinesthesia Test and Jebsen Hand Function Test-Writing subtest. Students with low vision scored lower on kinesthetic perception and writing performance than sighted peers. The correlation between scores for writing performance and upper extremity kinesthetic sense in the two groups was significant (r = -.34). The probability of deficiencies in kinesthetic information in students with low vision must be remembered.

Visuokinesthetic perception of hand movement is mediated by cerebro-cerebellar interaction between the left cerebellum and right parietal cortex.

Combination of visual and kinesthetic information is essential to perceive bodily movements. We conducted behavioral and functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments to investigate the neuronal correlates of visuokinesthetic combination in perception of hand movement. Participants experienced illusory flexion movement of their hand elicited by tendon vibration while they viewed video-recorded flexion (congruent: CONG) or extension (incongruent: INCONG) motions of their hand. The amount of illusory experience was graded by the visual velocities only when visual information regarding hand motion was concordant with kinesthetic information (CONG). The left posterolateral cerebellum was specifically recruited under the CONG, and this left cerebellar activation was consistent for both left and right hands. The left cerebellar activity reflected the participants' intensity of illusory hand movement under the CONG, and we further showed that coupling of activity between the left cerebellum and the “right” parietal cortex emerges during this visuokinesthetic combination/perception. The “left” cerebellum, working with the anatomically connected high-order bodily region of the “right” parietal cortex, participates in online combination of exteroceptive (vision) and interoceptive (kinesthesia) information to perceive hand movement. The cerebro–cerebellar interaction may underlie updating of one's “body image,” when perceiving bodily movement from visual and kinesthetic information.

Integration of auditory and kinesthetic information in motion: Alterations in Parkinson's disease.

The main aim in this work was to study the interaction between auditory and kinesthetic stimuli and its influence on motion control. The study was performed on healthy subjects and patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). Thirty-five right-handed volunteers (young, PD, and age-matched healthy participants, and PD-patients) were studied with three different motor tasks (slow cyclic movements, fast cyclic movements, and slow continuous movements) and under the action of kinesthetic stimuli and sounds at different beat rates. The action of kinesthesia was evaluated by comparing real movements with virtual movements (movements imaged but not executed). The fast cyclic task was accelerated by kinesthetic but not by auditory stimuli. The slow cyclic task changed with the beat rate of sounds but not with kinesthetic stimuli. The slow continuous task showed an integrated response to both sensorial modalities. These data show that the influence of the multisensory integration on motion changes with the motor task and that some motor patterns are modulated by the simultaneous action of auditory and kinesthetic information, a cross-modal integration that was different in PD-patients.

Threshold position control signifies a common spatial frame of reference for motor action and kinesthesia

Abundance of muscle spindles is most likely related to gradual recruitment and functional specialization of motor units, as well as to their fundamental role in reflex intermuscular interaction and cooperation with other sensory systems. Spindle afferents per se usually convey ambiguous kinesthetic information to the brain. Experimental data indicate that the nervous system cannot use efferent copies, i.e., pre-programmed imitations of motor commands to muscles to overcome this ambiguity and form adequate position sense. Instead, position sense becomes adequate when proprioceptive signals are interpreted in reference to the threshold limb position set by the brain. By resetting the threshold position, the nervous system not only appropriately adjusts kinesthetic sense but also causes motor action. This brief analysis illustrates not only that action and perception are coupled [J.J. Gibson, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. George Allen and Unwin Ltd., London, 1968; W.H. Warren, The dynamics of perception and action. Psychol. Rev. 113 (2006) 358–89] but also that they are accomplished in the same spatial frame of reference selected and manipulated by the brain.