Haptics: Science, Technology, Applications

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Human Haptic Sensing and Touch Enabled Computer Applications, EuroHaptics 2020, held in Leiden, The Netherlands, in September 2020. The 60 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 111 submissions. The were organized in topical sections on haptic science, haptic technology, and haptic applications. This year's focus is on accessibility

Haptics: Science, Technology, Applications

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Human Haptic Sensing and Touch Enabled Computer Applications, EuroHaptics 2020, held in Leiden, The Netherlands, in September 2020. The 60 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 111 submissions. The were organized in topical sections on haptic science, haptic technology, and haptic applications. This year's focus is on accessibility

Changed vibration threshold and loss of nerve movement in patients with repetitive strain injury; the peripheral neuropathology of RSI

Changed vibration threshold and loss of nerve movement in patients with repetitive strain injury; the peripheral neuropathology of RSI Repetitive strain injury (RSI) is a chronic pain condition affecting the upper limbs. It has been associated with tasks that require repetitive and intensive hand activities, particularly when these are carried out in constrained postures. Patients present with significant symptoms, but when examined, lack signs of specific inflammatory conditions or single peripheral nerve disorder. In consequence there have been considerable problems in the diagnosis of RSI and in designing effective treatment. Partial injury to peripheral nerves can produce significant symptoms and allodynic changes in the presence of normal nerve conduction studies. It therefore seemed possible that minor neuropathy might be an important contributor to RSI. To test this, vibration threshold was measured in patients with RSI and in a group of "at risk" office workers. Significantly raised thresholds were found, particularly affecting the median nerve, in both the patients and office workers. Following five minutes of keyboard use the patients showed a further rise in vibration threshold. Patients also showed reduced tolerance to non noxious suprathreshold vibration. These sensory changes are consistent with the changes observed in patients with diagnosed neuropathy. In further studies we imaged the median nerve at the carpal tunnel using MRI and high frequency ultrasound. The dynamics of the median nerve were studied during 30 degrees of wrist flexion and extension. A significant quantitative reduction of nerve movement was seen in patients. A correlation was found between nerve movement measured objectively and a clinical test of median nerve dynamics. How loss of normal nerve dynamics could contribute to the symptoms experienced by these patients is discussed. It is concluded that minor nerve injury forms part of the pathology of RSI and that testing vibration threshold and examining nerve movement could contribute to diagnosis and prove useful in evaluating treatment outcomes

Proceedings of the 6th international conference on disability, virtual reality and associated technologies (ICDVRAT 2006)

The proceedings of the conferenc

Multimodal assessment of neonatal pain

Pain assessment is critical to prevent suffering and harm in infants admitted to the neonatal care unit. As pain is a subjective experience, its assessment in nonverbal infants relies on surrogate measures. Current infant pain assessment tools that are based on behaviour and autonomic nervous system measurements lack face validity — they are unlikely to reflect pain in all its dimensions. In recent years, EEG-derived measures of pain have been developed in late preterm and term infants. Multimodal tools which include these cerebral measurements are conceptually more appropriate to measure pain. Yet, their use is still limited to specific research applications. This thesis focuses on outstanding questions that need to be addressed in order to advance the development of multimodal pain assessment tools that incorporate cerebral measurements. In the first part of this thesis, I focus on the characterisation of preterm infants’ noxious-evoked responses and their development. Across several modalities, premature infants have dampened or altered responsiveness compared to term infants, and it is uncertain if these responses can be reliably discriminated from tactile-evoked responses. In particular, a discriminative pattern of noxious-evoked EEG activity that is present in term infants, is unlikely to be present in preterm infants. In addition, it is unclear how noxious-evoked responses, especially brainderived responses, change with age. In this thesis, I use a classification model to show that infants aged 28–40 weeks postmenstrual age display discriminable multimodal responses to a noxious clinical procedure and a tactile control procedure, and I provide examples of how a such a model could be used in clinical trials of analgesics. I show that noxious-evoked responses change magnitude and morphology across this age range, and that discriminative brain activity emerges in early prematurity. In the second part of this thesis, I focus on improving the neuroscientific validity of a noxious-evoked EEG response measured at the cot-side, as the spatial neural correlates of these responses are still poorly understood. I present an EEG-fMRI pilot study to investigate the spatial neural correlates of inter-individual differences in noxious-evoked EEG responses and provide recommendations for a larger follow-up study. Overall, this thesis provides a characterisation of infants’ noxious-evoked responses and their development across multiple modalities, a crucial next step in improving multimodal neonatal pain assessment

Aerospace medicine and biology: A cumulative index to the continuing bibliography of the 1973 issues

A cumulative index to the abstracts contained in Supplements 112 through 123 of Aerospace Medicine and Biology A Continuing Bibliography is presented. It includes three indexes: subject, personal author, and corporate source

Aerospace Medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes, supplement 123, January 1974

This special bibliography lists 226 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in Dec. 1973