Haptics: Science, Technology, Applications

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human Haptic Sensing and Touch Enabled Computer Applications, EuroHaptics 2022, held in Hamburg, Germany, in May 2022. The 36 regular papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 129 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: haptic science; haptic technology; and haptic applications

Aerospace Medicine and Biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes, supplement 144

This bibliography lists 257 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in July 1975

Thermal-tactile integration in object temperature perception

The brain consistently faces a challenge of whether and how to combine the available information sources to estimate the properties of an object explored by hand. While object perception is an inference process involving multisensory inputs, thermal referral (TR) is an illusion demonstrating how interaction between thermal and tactile systems can lead to deviations from physical reality – When observers touch three stimulators simultaneously with the middle three fingers of one hand but only the outer two stimulators are heated (or cooled), thermal uniformity is perceived across three fingers. Here we used TR of warmth to examine the thermal-tactile interaction in object temperature perception. We show that TR is consistent with precision-weighted averaging of thermal sensation across tactile locations. Further, we show that prolonged contact with TR stimulation results in adaptation to the local variations of veridical temperatures instead of the thermal uniformity perceived across three fingers. Our results illuminate the flexibility of processing that underlies thermal-tactile interactions and serve as a basis for thermal display design

A robot hand testbed designed for enhancing embodiment and functional neurorehabilitation of body schema in subjects with upper limb impairment or loss.

Many upper limb amputees experience an incessant, post-amputation "phantom limb pain" and report that their missing limbs feel paralyzed in an uncomfortable posture. One hypothesis is that efferent commands no longer generate expected afferent signals, such as proprioceptive feedback from changes in limb configuration, and that the mismatch of motor commands and visual feedback is interpreted as pain. Non-invasive therapeutic techniques for treating phantom limb pain, such as mirror visual feedback (MVF), rely on visualizations of postural changes. Advances in neural interfaces for artificial sensory feedback now make it possible to combine MVF with a high-tech "rubber hand" illusion, in which subjects develop a sense of embodiment with a fake hand when subjected to congruent visual and somatosensory feedback. We discuss clinical benefits that could arise from the confluence of known concepts such as MVF and the rubber hand illusion, and new technologies such as neural interfaces for sensory feedback and highly sensorized robot hand testbeds, such as the "BairClaw" presented here. Our multi-articulating, anthropomorphic robot testbed can be used to study proprioceptive and tactile sensory stimuli during physical finger-object interactions. Conceived for artificial grasp, manipulation, and haptic exploration, the BairClaw could also be used for future studies on the neurorehabilitation of somatosensory disorders due to upper limb impairment or loss. A remote actuation system enables the modular control of tendon-driven hands. The artificial proprioception system enables direct measurement of joint angles and tendon tensions while temperature, vibration, and skin deformation are provided by a multimodal tactile sensor. The provision of multimodal sensory feedback that is spatiotemporally consistent with commanded actions could lead to benefits such as reduced phantom limb pain, and increased prosthesis use due to improved functionality and reduced cognitive burden

Effect of extremely weak pulsed magnetic field type Bemer 3000 on ratings of perceived exertion

The aim of this study was to examine whether is an influence of the exposition on different inductions of magnetic fields on rating of perceived exertion during 10 min long standardised physical cycloergometer exercise. The investigation was performed in 40 healthy, non-smoking, fit men, mean age 202. The participants were randomly attributed to 4 groups, each including 10 subjects. The first one (group E18) consisted of subjects exposed to the magnetic field with the intensity of 18 μT, the second one (group E64) exposed to the magnetic field with the intensity of 64 μT. Two control groups were formed to accompany these exposed to the magnetic field. In these placebo groups (S-T) subjects were not exposed to the magnetic field (so called false therapy, „sham treatment”). The study consisted of 4 steps: pilot study, the first endurance test, exposure to the magnetic field, the second endurance test. The aim of the pilot study was to define subjective feelings of the participant during the effort, his reaction to the effort and also practical familiarization with the character and rules of the endurance test and Borg scale interpretation during 10 min of endurance cycloergometer test. The first endurance test was performed two days after the pilot study with the same rules and its goal was to measure the level of tiredness according to the Borg scale during 10 min long standardised physical effort. The second endurance test was performed according to the same rules as the first one and its goal was to analyse the effect of 20 exposures to the magnetic field with the intensity of 18 and 64 μT repeated daily on the perception of tiredness increase as expressed in the Borg scale when performing 10 min long standardised physical effort. In subjects exposed to 18 μT magnetic field neither changes in the perception of fatigue nor changes in the heart rate at particular levels of the Borg scale have been observed. When compared with both control and placebo group subjects exposed to 64 μT strong magnetic field exhibited statistically significant increase in the period of attaining consecutive levels of fatigue as measured in the Borg scale. Results of the present study demonstrated beneficial influence of the magnetic field with 64 μT intensity on changes in the perception of fatigue during physical workload

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes, supplement 130, July 1974

This special bibliography lists 291 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in June 1974

More than skin deep: body representation beyond primary somatosensory cortex

The neural circuits underlying initial sensory processing of somatic information are relatively well understood. In contrast, the processes that go beyond primary somatosensation to create more abstract representations related to the body are less clear. In this review, we focus on two classes of higher-order processing beyond somatosensation. Somatoperception refers to the process of perceiving the body itself, and particularly of ensuring somatic perceptual constancy. We review three key elements of somatoperception: (a) remapping information from the body surface into an egocentric reference frame (b) exteroceptive perception of objects in the external world through their contact with the body and (c) interoceptive percepts about the nature and state of the body itself. Somatorepresentation, in contrast, refers to the essentially cognitive process of constructing semantic knowledge and attitudes about the body, including: (d) lexical-semantic knowledge about bodies generally and one’s own body specifically, (e) configural knowledge about the structure of bodies, (f) emotions and attitudes directed towards one’s own body, and (g) the link between physical body and psychological self. We review a wide range of neuropsychological, neuroimaging and neurophysiological data to explore the dissociation between these different aspects of higher somatosensory function

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes, supplement 128, May 1974

This special bibliography lists 282 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in April 1974

Interoception as independent cardiac, thermosensory, nociceptive, and affective touch perceptual submodalities

Interoception includes signals from inner organs and thin afferents in the skin, providing information about the body’s physiological state. However, the functional relationships between interoceptive submodalities are unclear, and thermosensation as skin-based interoception has rarely been considered. We used five tasks to examine the relationships among cardiac awareness, thermosensation, affective touch, and nociception. Thermosensation was probed with a classic temperature detection task and the new dynamic thermal matching task, where participants matched perceived moving thermal stimuli in a range of colder/warmer stimuli around thermoneutrality. We also examined differences between hairy and non-hairy skin and found superior perception of dynamic temperature and static cooling on hairy skin. Notably, no significant correlations were observed across interoceptive submodality accuracies (except for cold and pain perception in the palm), which indicates that interoception at perceptual levels should be conceptualised as a set of relatively independent processes and abilities rather than a single construct.Göran Gustafsson foundationSwedish Research CouncilEuropean Research Council under the European Union’s horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (SELF-UNITY)Marie Skłodowska-Curie Intra-European Individual Fellowship (HOMEOTHERMIC SELF)Accepte

Change blindness: eradication of gestalt strategies

Arrays of eight, texture-defined rectangles were used as stimuli in a one-shot change blindness (CB) task where there was a 50% chance that one rectangle would change orientation between two successive presentations separated by an interval. CB was eliminated by cueing the target rectangle in the first stimulus, reduced by cueing in the interval and unaffected by cueing in the second presentation. This supports the idea that a representation was formed that persisted through the interval before being 'overwritten' by the second presentation (Landman et al, 2003 Vision Research 43149–164]. Another possibility is that participants used some kind of grouping or Gestalt strategy. To test this we changed the spatial position of the rectangles in the second presentation by shifting them along imaginary spokes (by ±1 degree) emanating from the central fixation point. There was no significant difference seen in performance between this and the standard task [F(1,4)=2.565, p=0.185]. This may suggest two things: (i) Gestalt grouping is not used as a strategy in these tasks, and (ii) it gives further weight to the argument that objects may be stored and retrieved from a pre-attentional store during this task