Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Wiley  

DOI： 10.1002/brb3.2033

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Authorship：Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：MyJove Corporation  

Passive tactile perception is the ability to passively and statically perceive stimulus information coming from the skin; for example, the ability to sense spatial information is the strongest in the skin on the hands. This ability is termed tactile spatial acuity, and is measured by the tactile threshold or discrimination threshold. At present, the two-point threshold is extensively used as a measure of tactile spatial acuity, although many studies have indicated that critical deficits exist in two-point discrimination. Therefore, a computer-controlled tactile stimulus system was developed, the tactile semiautomated passive-finger angle stimulator (TSPAS), using the tactile angle discrimination threshold as a new measure for tactile spatial acuity. The TSPAS is a simple, easily operated system that applies raised angle stimuli to a subject's passive fingerpad, while controlling movement speed, distance, and contact duration. The components of the TSPAS are described in detail as well as the procedure to calculate the tactile angle discrimination threshold.

DOI： 10.3791/61218

PubMed

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

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Authorship：Corresponding author   Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

When humans perceive a sensation, their brains integrate inputs from sensory receptors and process them based on their expectations. The mechanisms of this predictive coding in the human somatosensory system are not fully understood. We fill a basic gap in our understanding of the predictive processing of somatosensation by examining the layer-specific activity in sensory input and predictive feedback in the human primary somatosensory cortex (S1). We acquired submillimeter functional magnetic resonance imaging data at 7T (n = 10) during a task of perceived, predictable, and unpredictable touching sequences. We demonstrate that the sensory input from thalamic projects preferentially activates the middle layer, while the superficial and deep layers in S1 are more engaged for cortico-cortical predictive feedback input. These findings are pivotal to understanding the mechanisms of tactile prediction processing in the human somatosensory cortex.

DOI： 10.1126/sciadv.aav9053

PubMed

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

BACKGROUND: Psychological resilience is defined as the process and outcome of individuals' successful adaptation to challenging life experiences. The Habenula (Hb) is known to be involved in the stress response; however, the relationship between Hb volume and resilience in humans remains unclear. This study investigated the correlation among resilience, Hb volume, and depressive tendencies in adults. METHODS: Hb volumes were assessed using deep learning techniques applied to 110 healthy participants. Resilience and depression were evaluated using the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale and Beck Depression Inventory-II, respectively. We examined the relationship between Hb volume and resilience and assessed the mediating effects of resilience on the relationship between Hb volume and depressive tendencies. RESULTS: Correlation analysis revealed a positive correlation between resilience and Hb volume (partial r = 0.176, p = 0.001), which was more pronounced in women (partial r = 0.353, p = 0.003). Hb volumes on the left and right sides exhibited significant lateralization (LI = 0.031, 95 % CI = [0.016, 0.046]). Despite Hb asymmetry, lateralization was not significantly associated with resilience. The mediation analysis shows significant indirect effect of resilience on the relationship between Hb volume and depressive tendencies (β = -0.093, 95%CI = [-0.189, -0.019]). CONCLUSION: This study found that populations with lower resilience have smaller Hb volume. Previous research has shown that Hb volume decreased with the increasing severity of depression symptoms in patients. Our findings support this view and extend it to a population that has not been clinically diagnosed with depression. Additionally, we found that psychological resilience can be predicted by Hb volume and may serve as a mediating factor indirectly affecting depressive tendencies, even in healthy individuals. LIMITATIONS: Due to its cross-sectional design, this study was unable to analyze dynamic changes in Hb volume during the process of resilience adaptation.

DOI： 10.1016/j.jad.2024.08.012

PubMed

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

A recently proposed "Hyperfocusing hypothesis" suggests that schizotypy is associated with a more narrow but more intense way of allocating attention. The current study aims to test a vital prediction of this hypothesis in a social context, that schizotypy may be related to greater difficulty overcoming the distracting effects of gaze. This could cause a longer time to respond to targets that are invalidly cued by gaze. The current study tested this prediction in a modified Posner cueing paradigm by using P3 as an indicator for attentional resources. Seventy-four young healthy individuals with different levels of schizotypy were included, they were asked to detect the location of a target that was cued validly or invalidly by the gaze and head orientation. The results revealed that (a) schizotypy is associated with hyperfocusing on gaze direction, leading to greater difficulty overcoming the distracting effect of gaze. The higher the trait-schizotypy score, the more time needed to respond to targets that were invalidly cued by gaze (b) schizotypy is associated with reduced P3 which is directed by social communicative stimuli. The higher the trait-schizotypy score, the smaller the amplitude of P3 (c) the relationship between schizotypal traits and response times of the gaze-invalid condition is fully intermediated by P3. The findings of the current study suggest the P3 component may be a crucial neural mechanism underlying joint attention deficits in schizophrenia.

DOI： 10.1016/j.schres.2024.04.006

PubMed

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：MDPI AG  

(1) Background: This study investigates whether audiovisual n-back training leads to training effects on working memory and transfer effects on perceptual processing. (2) Methods: Before and after training, the participants were tested using the audiovisual n-back task (1-, 2-, or 3-back), to detect training effects, and the audiovisual discrimination task, to detect transfer effects. (3) Results: For the training effect, the behavioral results show that training leads to greater accuracy and faster response times. Stronger training gains in accuracy and response time using 3- and 2-back tasks, compared to 1-back, were observed in the training group. Event-related potentials (ERPs) data revealed an enhancement of P300 in the frontal and central regions across all working memory levels after training. Training also led to the enhancement of N200 in the central region in the 3-back condition. For the transfer effect, greater audiovisual integration in the frontal and central regions during the post-test rather than pre-test was observed at an early stage (80–120 ms) in the training group. (4) Conclusion: Our findings provide evidence that audiovisual n-back training enhances neural processes underlying a working memory and demonstrate a positive influence of higher cognitive functions on lower cognitive functions.

DOI： 10.3390/brainsci13070992

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Frontiers Media SA  

Reacting to a moving object requires an ability to estimate when a moving object reaches its destination, also referred to as the time-to-contact (TTC) estimation. Although the TTC estimation of threatening visually moving objects is known to be underestimated, the effect of the affective content of auditory information on visual TTC estimation remains unclear. We manipulated the velocity and presentation time to investigate the TTC of a threat or non-threat target with the addition of auditory information. In the task, a visual or an audiovisual target moved from right to left and disappeared behind an occluder. Participants’ task was to estimate the TTC of the target, they needed to press a button when they thought that the target contacted a destination behind the occluder. Behaviorally, the additional auditory affective content facilitated TTC estimation; velocity was a more critical factor than presentation time in determining the audiovisual threat facilitation effect. Overall, the results indicate that exposure to auditory affective content can influence TTC estimation and that the effect of velocity on TTC estimation will provide more information than presentation time.

DOI： 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1105824

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Frontiers Media SA  

Introduction

Numerous studies have shown that aging greatly affects audiovisual integration; however, it is still unclear when the aging effect occurs, and its neural mechanism has yet to be fully elucidated.

Methods

We assessed the audiovisual integration (AVI) of older (n = 40) and younger (n = 45) adults using simple meaningless stimulus detection and discrimination tasks. The results showed that the response was significantly faster and more accurate for younger adults than for older adults in both the detection and discrimination tasks. The AVI was comparable for older and younger adults during stimulus detection (9.37% vs. 9.43%); however, the AVI was lower for older than for younger adults during stimulus discrimination (9.48% vs. 13.08%) behaviorally. The electroencephalography (EEG) analysis showed that comparable AVI amplitude was found at 220–240 ms for both groups during stimulus detection and discrimination, but there was no significant difference between brain regions for older adults but a higher AVI amplitude in the right posterior for younger adults. Additionally, a significant AVI was found for younger adults in 290–310 ms but was absent for older adults during stimulus discrimination. Furthermore, significant AVI was found in the left anterior and right anterior at 290–310 ms for older adults but in the central, right posterior and left posterior for younger adults.

Discussion

These results suggested that the aging effect of AVI occurred in multiple stages, but the attenuated AVI mainly occurred in the later discriminating stage attributed to attention deficit.

DOI： 10.3389/fnagi.2023.1151652

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：American Psychological Association (APA)  

Cuteness perception is a basic function in social interactions. Most studies focus on the impact of facial elemental features on cuteness ratings, but there are many factors that affect cuteness perception. Spatial frequency (SF) is one of the most important parameters in studies on faces. However, few studies have investigated the impact of SFs on cuteness perception. In this study, 16 images of infant faces with four cuteness levels were selected by a prerating experiment. Using a 7-point Likert scale paradigm, participants were asked to rate the cuteness of infant faces, including one version of broad unfiltered faces and four versions of filtered faces. The results showed that filtered SFs reduced cuteness ratings and that the impact of SFs was related to the cuteness levels of faces. Specifically, faces with low SFs got the lowest cuteness ratings. The ratings of faces with low SFs in neutral cuteness had a greater reduction than that in positive cuteness. In comparison, faces with medium and high SFs obtained relatively high cuteness ratings. However, the ratings in medium SFs were higher than that in high SFs if the cuteness of faces exceeded a certain level. Interestingly, their ratings reduction size increased with the improvement of cuteness levels. These results extend our understanding of the cuteness mechanism from an SF processing perspective.

DOI： 10.1037/emo0001040

Scopus

PubMed

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Elsevier BV  

DOI： 10.1016/j.concog.2023.103478

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：SAGE Publications  

Previous studies have shown that attention influences audiovisual integration (AVI) in multiple stages, but it remains unclear how AVI interacts with attentional load. In addition, while aging has been associated with sensory-functional decline, little is known about how older individuals integrate cross-modal information under attentional load. To investigate these issues twenty older adults and 20 younger adults were recruited to conduct a dual task including a multiple object tracking (MOT) task, which manipulated sustained visual attentional load, and an audiovisual discrimination task, which assesses AVI. The results showed that response times were shorter and hit rate was higher for audiovisual stimuli than for auditory or visual stimuli alone and in younger adults than in older adults. The race model analysis showed that AVI was higher under the load_3 condition (monitoring two targets of the MOT task) than under any other load condition (no-load [NL], one or three targets monitoring). This effect was found regardless of age. However, AVI was lower in older adults than younger adults under NL condition. Moreover, the peak latency was longer, and the time window of AVI was delayed in older adults compared to younger adults under all conditions. These results suggest that slight visual sustained attentional load increased AVI but that heavy visual sustained attentional load decreased AVI, which supports the claim that attention resource was limited, and we further proposed that AVI was positively modulated by attentional resource. Finally, there were substantial impacts of aging on AVI; AVI was delayed in older adults.

DOI： 10.1177/20416695231157348

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Springer Science and Business Media LLC  

DOI： 10.3758/s13414-022-02638-5

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Other Link： https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13414-022-02638-5/fulltext.html

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Oxford University Press (OUP)  

Abstract

It has been shown that the functional dependency of the brain exists in both direct and indirect regional relationships. Therefore, it is necessary to map higher-order coupling in brain structure and function to understand brain dynamic. However, how to quantify connections between not directly regions remains unknown to schizophrenia. The word2vec is a common algorithm through create embeddings of words to solve these problems. We apply the node2vec embedding representation to characterize features on each node, their pairwise relationship can give rise to correspondence relationships between brain regions. Then we adopt pearson correlation to quantify the higher-order coupling between structure and function in normal controls and schizophrenia. In addition, we construct direct and indirect connections to quantify the coupling between their respective functional connections. The results showed that higher-order coupling is significantly higher in schizophrenia. Importantly, the anomalous cause of coupling mainly focus on indirect structural connections. The indirect structural connections play an essential role in functional connectivity–structural connectivity (SC–FC) coupling. The similarity between embedded representations capture more subtle network underlying information, our research provides new perspectives for understanding SC–FC coupling. A strong indication that the structural backbone of the brain has an intimate influence on the resting-state functional.

DOI： 10.1093/cercor/bhac432

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Frontiers Media SA  

People’s subjective factors can affect the spatial allocation of attention, and objects that are more in line with people’s expectations are easier to attract attention. In the current study, we wanted to know whether the meaning-contingent spatial attentional orienting could occur at the subliminal level, that is, whether conscious awareness was needed, and which attentional control settings worked. The current study employed a modified spatial cueing paradigm and the cues were made imperceptible by backward masking. The results showed that the capture effects of the left and the right positions stemmed from the meaning-contingent attentional control setting based on displaywide features, while the inhibition effect of the lower position and the capture effect of the upper position stemmed from the abrupt onset of subliminal cues and their masks. It is concluded that the attentional orienting of meaning contingency could occur at the subliminal level, which was not restricted by conscious perception. In particular, the attentional control setting based on displaywide features played an important role in spatial attentional orienting, which was manifested in the consistent capture effects on the horizontal sides. This study refined and separated the spatial attentional orienting effects, supported the contingent involuntary attentional orienting hypothesis, and expanded its scope of application.

DOI： 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1035690

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：SAGE Publications  

A sound-induced flash illusion (SiFI) is a multisensory illusion dominated by auditory stimuli, in which the individual perceives that the number of visual flashes is equal to the number of auditory stimuli when visual flashes are presented along with an unequal number of auditory stimuli. Although the mechanisms underlying fission and fusion illusions have been documented, there is not yet a consensus on how they vary according to the different eccentricities. In the present study, by incorporating the classic SiFI paradigm into four different eccentricities, we aimed to investigate whether the SiFI varies under the different eccentricities. The results showed that the fission illusion varied significantly across the four eccentricities, with the perifovea (7°) and peripheral (11°) illusions being greater than the fovea and parafovea (3°) illusions. In contrast, the fusion illusion did not vary significantly across the four eccentricities. Our findings revealed that SiFI was affected by different visual fields and that there were differences between the fission and the fusion illusions. Furthermore, by examining the SiFI of eccentricity across visual fields, this study also suggests that bottom-up factors affect the SiFI.

DOI： 10.1177/03010066221136670

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Other Link： http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/03010066221136670

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Frontiers Media SA  

Audiovisual integration is an essential process that influences speech perception in conversation. However, it is still debated whether older individuals benefit more from audiovisual integration than younger individuals. This ambiguity is likely due to stimulus features, such as stimulus intensity. The purpose of the current study was to explore the effect of aging on audiovisual integration, using event-related potentials (ERPs) at different stimulus intensities. The results showed greater audiovisual integration in older adults at 320–360 ms. Conversely, at 460–500 ms, older adults displayed attenuated audiovisual integration in the frontal, fronto-central, central, and centro-parietal regions compared to younger adults. In addition, we found older adults had greater audiovisual integration at 200–230 ms under the low-intensity condition compared to the high-intensity condition, suggesting inverse effectiveness occurred. However, inverse effectiveness was not found in younger adults. Taken together, the results suggested that there was age-related dissociation in audiovisual integration and inverse effectiveness, indicating that the neural mechanisms underlying audiovisual integration differed between older adults and younger adults.

DOI： 10.3389/fnagi.2022.1010060

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Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Springer Science and Business Media LLC  

DOI： 10.3758/s13414-022-02461-y

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Other Link： https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13414-022-02461-y/fulltext.html

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Wiley  

DOI： 10.1002/jmri.28173

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Other Link： https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full-xml/10.1002/jmri.28173

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Frontiers Media SA  

The masked priming paradigm has been extensively used to investigate the indirect impacts of unconscious stimuli on conscious behaviors, and the congruency effect of priming on free choices has gained increasing attention. Free choices allow participants to voluntarily choose a response from multiple options during each trial. While repeated practice is known to increase priming effects in subliminal visual tasks, whether practice increases the priming effect of free choices in the masked priming paradigm is unclear. And it is also not clear how the proportions of free choice and forced choice trials in one block will affect the free choice masked priming effect. The present study applied repeated practice in the masked priming paradigm and found that after training, the participants were more likely to be influenced by masked primes during free choice, but this training process did not alter the visibility of masked stimuli. In addition, this study revealed that when the proportions of free choice and forced choice trials were equal during the training stage, this enhanced effect by practice was the strongest. These results indicated that practice could enhance masked stimulus processing in free-choice, and that the learning effect may mainly be derived from the early selection and integrated processing of masked stimuli.

DOI： 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.927234

Scopus

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Wiley  

DOI： 10.1002/hbm.25892

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Other Link： https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full-xml/10.1002/hbm.25892

Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Springer Science and Business Media LLC  

DOI： 10.3758/s13414-021-02437-4

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Other Link： https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13414-021-02437-4/fulltext.html

Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Frontiers Media SA  

Researchers have suggested that infants exhibiting baby schema are considered cute. These similar studies have mainly focused on changes in overall baby schema facial features. However, whether a change in only eye size affects the perception of cuteness across different facial expressions and ages has not been explicitly evaluated until now. In the present study, a paired comparison method and 7-point scale were used to investigate the effects of eye size on perceived cuteness across facial expressions (positive, neutral, and negative) and ages (adults and infants). The results show that stimuli with large eyes were perceived to be cuter than both unmanipulated eyes and small eyes across all facial expressions and age groups. This suggests not only that the effect of baby schema on cuteness is based on changes in a set of features but also that eye size as an individual feature can affect the perception of cuteness.

DOI： 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.674456

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Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Elsevier BV  

DOI： 10.1016/j.neulet.2021.136393

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Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Inderscience Publishers  

DOI： 10.1504/ijma.2022.123892

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Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Inderscience Publishers  

DOI： 10.1504/ijma.2022.130399

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Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：SAGE Publications  

Although previous studies have shown that semantic multisensory integration can be differentially modulated by attention focus, it remains unclear whether attentionally mediated multisensory perceptual facilitation could impact further cognitive performance. Using a delayed matching-to-sample paradigm, the present study investigated the effect of semantically congruent bimodal presentation on subsequent unisensory working memory (WM) performance by manipulating attention focus. The results showed that unisensory WM retrieval was faster in the semantically congruent condition than in the incongruent multisensory encoding condition. However, such a result was only found in the divided-modality attention condition. This result indicates that a robust multisensory representation was constructed during semantically congruent multisensory encoding with divided-modality attention; this representation then accelerated unisensory WM performance, especially auditory WM retrieval. Additionally, an overall faster unisensory WM retrieval was observed under the modality-specific selective attention condition compared with the divided-modality condition, indicating that the division of attention to address two modalities demanded more central executive resources to encode and integrate crossmodal information and to maintain a constructed multisensory representation, leaving few resources for WM retrieval. Additionally, the present finding may support the amodal view that WM has an amodal central storage component that is used to maintain modal-based attention-optimized multisensory representations.

DOI： 10.1177/03010066211052943

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Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：IOP Publishing  

DOI： 10.1088/1741-2552/ac2c9e

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Other Link： https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1741-2552/ac2c9e/pdf

Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/icma52036.2021.9512736

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Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/icma52036.2021.9512687

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Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/icma52036.2021.9512762

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Authorship：Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：MDPI AG  

Touch shape discrimination is not only closely related to tactile mechanoreceptors but also higher cognitive function. However, previous shape discrimination methods are difficult to complete in a short time, and the devices are complicated to operate and not user-friendly for nonprofessionals. Here, we propose a new method, the evaluation quantity of which is the angle discrimination threshold. In addition, to make this method easy to use for nonprofessionals, we designed a haptic angle sorting system, including the device and software. To evaluate this method, the angle sorting and two-angle discrimination experiments were compared, and it was found that participants spent significantly less time in the former experiment than in the latter. At the same time, there is a strong correlation between the performance of angle sorting and two-angle discrimination, which shows that the angle threshold obtained by the new method can also be used to evaluate the ability of touch discrimination. Moreover, the angle sorting results of different age groups also further demonstrate the feasibility of the method. The efficiency of this new method and the effectiveness of the system also provide a convenient means for evaluating haptic shape discrimination, which may have potential clinical application value in the early diagnosis of peripheral neuropathy and even in the evaluation of cognitive function.

DOI： 10.3390/app11157049

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)  

In the past few years, we have gained a better understanding of the information processing mechanism in the human brain, which has led to advances in artificial intelligence and humanoid robots. However, among the various sensory systems, studying the somatosensory system presents the greatest challenge. Here, we provide a comprehensive review of the human somatosensory system and its corresponding applications in artificial systems. Due to the uniqueness of the human hand in integrating receptor and actuator functions, we focused on the role of the somatosensory system in object recognition and action guidance. First, the low-threshold mechanoreceptors in the human skin and somatotopic organization principles along the ascending pathway, which are fundamental to artificial skin, were summarized. Second, we discuss high-level brain areas, which interacted with each other in the haptic object recognition. Based on this close-loop route, we used prosthetic upper limbs as an example to highlight the importance of somatosensory information. Finally, we present prospective research directions for human haptic perception, which could guide the development of artificial somatosensory systems.

DOI： 10.34133/2021/9843259

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Other Link： http://downloads.spj.sciencemag.org/cbsystems/2021/9843259.xml

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：SAGE Publications  

Working memory refers to the cognitive capacity to temporarily store and manipulate information from multiple sensory domains. Recent studies have shown that cognitive training can improve performance in both visual working memory and tactile working memory tasks. However, it is still unclear whether the effects of training can be transferred from one sensory modality to another. The current study assessed whether the training effect of the tactile orientation sequence task could transfer to visual orientation sequence and visuospatial working memory tasks. The results showed that participants’ accuracy in the tactile orientation sequence task was significantly increased after 9 days of training compared with that before training. Remarkably, participants’ accuracy in both the visual orientation sequence task and the visuospatial task was significantly improved after 9 days of training. These results suggest that it is possible to improve visual working memory through a transfer effect from tactile task training without practice in the visual domain, which opens a wide range of applications for tactile orientation sequence tasks.

DOI： 10.1177/21582440211031549

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Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Frontiers Media SA  

Neuronal excitation and inhibition occur in the brain at the same time, and brain activation reflects changes in the sum of excitation and inhibition. This principle has been well-established in lower-level sensory systems, including vision and touch, based on animal studies. However, it is unclear how the somatosensory system processes the balance between excitation and inhibition. In the present ERP study, we modified the traditional spatial attention paradigm by adding double stimuli presentations at short intervals (i.e., 10, 30, and 100 ms). Seventeen subjects participated in the experiment. Five types of stimulation were used in the experiment: a single stimulus (one raised pin for 40 ms), standard stimulus (eight pins for 40 ms), and double stimuli presented at intervals of 10, 30, and 100 ms. The subjects were asked to attend to a particular finger and detect whether the standard stimulus was presented to that finger. The results showed a clear attention-related ERP component in the single stimulus condition, but the suppression components associated with the three interval conditions seemed to be dominant in somatosensory areas. In particular, we found the strongest suppression effect in the ISI-30 condition (interval of 30 ms) and that the suppression and enhancement effects seemed to be counterbalanced in both the ISI-10 and ISI-100 conditions (intervals of 10 and 100 ms, respectively). This type of processing may allow humans to easily discriminate between multiple stimuli on the same body part.

DOI： 10.3389/fninf.2020.571369

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Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Springer Science and Business Media LLC  

DOI： 10.3758/s13414-020-02168-y

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Other Link： http://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13414-020-02168-y/fulltext.html

Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Inderscience Publishers  

DOI： 10.1504/ijma.2021.115241

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Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)   Publisher：Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers  

DOI： 10.1299/jsmecs.2021.59.01a1

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Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers  

DOI： 10.1299/jsmecs.2021.59.01a2

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Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：SAGE Publications  

Attentional processes play a complex and multifaceted role in the integration of input from different sensory modalities. However, whether increased attentional load disrupts the audiovisual (AV) integration of common objects that involve semantic content remains unclear. Furthermore, knowledge regarding how semantic congruency interacts with attentional load to influence the AV integration of common objects is limited. We investigated these questions by examining AV integration under various attentional-load conditions. AV integration was assessed by adopting an animal identification task using unisensory (animal images and sounds) and AV stimuli (semantically congruent AV objects and semantically incongruent AV objects), while attentional load was manipulated by using a rapid serial visual presentation task. Our results indicate that attentional load did not attenuate the integration of semantically congruent AV objects. However, semantically incongruent animal sounds and images were not integrated (as there was no multisensory facilitation), and the interference effect produced by the semantically incongruent AV objects was reduced by increased attentional-load manipulations. These findings highlight the critical role of semantic congruency in modulating the effect of attentional load on the AV integration of common objects.

DOI： 10.1177/2041669520981096

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Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/icma49215.2020.9233599

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Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/icma49215.2020.9233761

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Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/icma49215.2020.9233631

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Springer Science and Business Media LLC  

DOI： 10.3758/s13414-020-02001-6

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：SAGE Publications  

We measured the eccentricity effect of deformation thresholds of circular contours for two types of the radial frequency (RF) patterns with their centers at the fixation point: constant circular contour frequency (CCF) RF patterns and constant RF magnified (retino-cortical scaling) RF patterns. We varied the eccentricity by changing the mean radius of the RF patterns while keeping the centers of the RF patterns at the fixation point. Our peripheral stimulus presentation was distinguished from previous studies which have simply translated RF patterns at different locations in the visual field. Sensitivity for such shape discrimination fell off as the moderate and high CCF patterns were presented on more eccentric sites but did not as the low CCF patterns. However, sensitivity held constant as the magnified RF patterns were presented on more eccentric sites, indicating that the eccentricity effects observed for the high and moderate CCF patterns were neutralized by retinocortical mapping. Notably, sensitivity for the magnified RF patterns with large radii (4°–16°) presented in the peripheral field revealed a similar RF dependence observed for RF patterns with small radii (0.25°–1.0°) presented at the fovea in previous studies.

DOI： 10.1177/0301006620936473

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Other Link： http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/0301006620936473

Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Inderscience Publishers  

DOI： 10.1504/ijma.2020.108795

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.  

Understanding of human sensory system will provide useful information's to the development of virtual reality (VR) technology that simulates a 3D virtual world and enables the generation of visual, audio, and haptic feedback for the full immersion of users. The present study is aimed to promote a better understanding of the visual system which is indispensable to recognize objects, face, animal, building, and natural scene in the visual environment in daily lives. We are focused to study difference in perception between foveal and peripheral visual system. We asked here about dependency of contrast discrimination of circular contour patterns on retinal eccentricity of the visual field, using standard (non-magnified) and cortically magnified stimuli. The contrast discrimination thresholds for the standard stimuli increased with increasing the retinal eccentricity. However, those for the cortically magnified stimuli remained constant irrespective of change of retinal eccentricity. We concluded that contrast discrimination thresholds, once scaling by cortically magnification transformation, were similar at all eccentricities.

DOI： 10.1109/ICMA.2019.8816238

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.  

Sound identification may affect sound processing and naming, and then influence the performance in hazard identification and memory behavior. In addition, previous studies have shown that there are many factors that can affect the recognition of sound, including ecological frequencies, typical sounds, and some acoustic properties of sounds [6]. However, there are no data directly explore the impact of the length of presentation time on sound recognition, so we will collect the Naming and evaluation data which is from different category (animal, music, artificial) of 30 familiar sounds by controlling five time periods (150ms, 200ms, 250ms, 300ms, 350ms). For all categories of sound materials, as the presentation time increases, the accuracy of recognition increases significantly. These normative data may be helpful in guiding sound identification in future artificial intelligence studies and help clarify the relationships between sound naming and other variables, including hazard identification.

DOI： 10.1109/ICMA.2019.8816333

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Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/icma.2019.8815967

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Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/icma.2019.8816393

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Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/icma.2019.8816531

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Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/icma.2019.8816326

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Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/icma.2019.8816525

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：SAGE Publications  

Temporal expectation relies on different predictive information, such as regular rhythms and symbolic cues, to direct attention to a future moment in time to optimize behaviour. However, whether differences exist between temporal expectations driven by regular rhythms and symbolic cues has not been clearly established. In this study, 20 participants performed two temporal expectation tasks in which a rhythmic cue or a symbolic cue indicated (70% expected) that the target would appear after an interval of 500 ms (short), 1,500 ms (medium), or 2,500 ms (long). We found larger cueing effects for the rhythmic cued task than for the symbolic cued task during the short interval, indicating that rhythmic cues were more effective in improving performance. Furthermore, no significant difference was found during the longer interval, reflect that the behavioural differences between the two forms of temporal expectations were likely to diminish as the time interval increased. Thus, we speculate that the temporal expectation driven by rhythmic cues differs from that driven by symbolic cues only in the limited time range; however, the mechanisms underlying the two forms of temporal expectations trend to become more similar over increasing temporal scales.

DOI： 10.1177/0301006619847579

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Authorship：Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.  

Although symmetry is known to be an important determinant of visual processing and an appreciation of visual symmetry has been studied in several electroencephalography (EEG) experiments, it remains not well clear the mechanism of visual symmetry processing. To investigate this, we measured the processing of symmetrical stimulus (diagonal) and asymmetrical stimulus (control) with two levels of intensity by measured visual evoked potential (VEP). Our results showed significant difference in P8, P4 and O2, the right hemisphere for symmetry processing. In addition, the activity of visual related cortex for diagonal was weaker than that for control during the period of (160-190 ms), whereas the relationship was inverse during the period of (220-280 ms) in all intensity. This work provides a new account of neural mechanisms involved in visual symmetry perception.

DOI： 10.1109/ICMA.2018.8484318

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.  

Many ophthalmic diseases such as age-Related macular degeneration can lead to central vision loss. Loss of central vision can reduce some cognitive abilities like reading, driving or face recognition. Training brain can improve the cognitive ability of the people to use their peripheral vision. Researchers have difficulty in finding enough subjects who have central vision loss to ensure the validity of the experiment. Central-scotoma simulator (A software can simulate the dark spot of the central vision) can simulate the patient's vision by which can reduce the difficulty of finding the subject. In previous studies, the central-scotoma simulator based on eye tracker had proven to work well in some researches. This study has reduced hardware costs on the premise of ensuring software functionality and provided methodological support for the development of cognitive experiments about central vision loss. We completed three works to achieve our goal. Firstly, we explained the role of the central-scotoma simulator in scientific research about central vision loss. Secondly, we chose the suitable hardware and software to implement a low-cost simulator. Lastly, we used this simulator to simulate the symptom of patients with macular diseases, which resulted in the normal vision subjects achieved similar results same as macular degeneration in natural oral reading test.

DOI： 10.1109/ICMA.2018.8484283

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Authorship：Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Frontiers Media S. A  

In the somatosensory system, it is well known that the bilateral secondary somatosensory cortex (SII) receives projections from the unilateral primary somatosensory cortex (SI), and the SII, in turn, sends feedback projections to SI. Most neuroimaging studies have clearly shown bilateral SII activation using only unilateral stimulation for both anatomical and functional connectivity across SII subregions. However, no study has unveiled differences in the functional connectivity of the contra-and ipsilateral SII network that relates to frontoparietal areas during tactile object recognition. Therefore, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a delayed match-to-sample (DMS) task to investigate the contributions of bilateral SII during tactile object recognition. In the fMRI experiment, 14 healthy subjects were presented with tactile angle stimuli on their right index finger and asked to encode three sample stimuli during the encoding phase and one test stimulus during the recognition phase. Then, the subjects indicated whether the angle of test stimulus was presented during the encoding phase. The results showed that contralateral (left) SII activity was greater than ipsilateral (right) SII activity during the encoding phase, but there was no difference during the recognition phase. A subsequent psycho-physiological interaction (PPI) analysis revealed distinct connectivity from the contra- and ipsilateral SII to other regions. The left SII functionally connected to the left SI and right primary and premotor cortex, while the right SII functionally connected to the left posterior parietal cortex (PPC). Our findings suggest that in situations involving unilateral tactile object recognition, contra- and ipsilateral SII will induce an asymmetrical functional connectivity to other brain areas, which may occur by the hand contralateral effect of SII.

DOI： 10.3389/fnhum.2017.00662

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

The basal ganglia, which have been shown to be a significant multisensory hub, are disordered in Parkinson's disease (PD). This study was to investigate the audiovisual integration of peripheral stimuli in PD patients with/without sleep disturbances. Thirty-six age-matched normal controls (NC) and 30 PD patients were recruited for an auditory/visual discrimination experiment. The mean response times for each participant were analyzed using repeated measures ANOVA and race model. The results showed that the response to all stimuli was significantly delayed for PD compared to NC (all p < 0.01). The response to audiovisual stimuli was significantly faster than that to unimodal stimuli in both NC and PD (p < 0.001). Additionally, audiovisual integration was absent in PD; however, it did occur in NC. Further analysis showed that there was no significant audiovisual integration in PD with/without cognitive impairment or in PD with/without sleep disturbances. Furthermore, audiovisual facilitation was not associated with Hoehn and Yahr stage, disease duration, or the presence of sleep disturbances (all p > 0.05). The current results showed that audiovisual multisensory integration for peripheral stimuli is absent in PD regardless of sleep disturbances and further suggested the abnormal audiovisual integration might be a potential early manifestation of PD.

DOI： 10.1155/2018/1648017

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.  

In a haptic shape task, the human ability to discriminate objects on basis of their shape, as defined by active exploratory movements of the hand, is dependent on receptors located in the skin and deep structures. The shape of a 2-d object is a function of its geometric properties, including the pattern of the surfaces that form the object, their density, their size, and their spatial features. It is now widely known that haptic shape task shares neural activity in visual cortical areas, but we have little information about the factors for haptic shape perception. We investigated to what factors of pattern play an important role in a haptic shape discrimination task. Haptic shape can be gained through a small braille device. There are 10 baselines in the experiment, and 6 kinds of other patterns based on each baseline were made. Healthy right-handed subjects performed a delayed-match-to sample task discriminating between pairs of two-dimensional patterns. From the different characteristics of difficulty in the pattern task, we concluded that different difficulty in discrimination task are underling haptic shape patterns with different densities and sizes.

DOI： 10.1109/ICMA.2017.8015879

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.  

Recently, virtual reality (VR) have received increasing attention. For the development of VR, human recognition mechanism is a crucial factor. Previous neuroimaging studies of the visual recognition have found that mechanism of recognition is different on retinal eccentricity of visual field. For example, when we recognize the face, the building and the scene, we use the central vision field. However not only the central vision field but also the peripheral vision field is used for building recognition. And for the recognize of the scene, the peripheral vision field is even more important than central vision field. Revealing the object recognition mechanism demands us to clarify the functions of the central and the peripheral vision field. The purpose of this study is the first step to reveal the object recognition mechanism of the central and the peripheral vision field. We analyze the dependency of the fundamental elements of the objects on retinal eccentricity. The retinal eccentricity is the degree of the gap between the central and the peripheral vision field. Basically, we measured the dependency of recognition on retinal eccentricity of visual field as we changed the elements and the exposure duration of stimuli. The fundamental elements of the objects are the stimuli size and the line width of the stimuli. The stimuli size and the line width of the stimuli showed a large dependency on retinal eccentricity of visual field. But the exposure duration of stimuli showed a small dependency on retinal eccentricity of visual field.

DOI： 10.1109/ICMA.2017.8016080

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.  

Although previous studies have demonstrated visual processing in detection and discrimination task in human, how detection and discrimination task alter visual processing has not yet been completely elucidated. To investigate this issue, we design performing two classical perceptual tasks: 1) grating detection experiment, 2) grating orientation discrimination experiment. In grating detection experiment, participants were instructed to identify stimulus, if they saw a stimulus, by pressing right button as quickly and accurately as possible. In grating orientation discrimination experiment, participants were told to identify the orientation of the stimulus and pressed relevant button as quickly and accurately as possible. We assessed the diversity by measuring the magnitude of sensitivity and intercepts through reaction times (RT). The results showed that RT strongly depended on experimental task. The response to discrimination task is significantly slower than that for detection task (p &lt
0.05). However, visual detectability was not depended on experimental task, and no significant difference of sensitivity was found among detection task and discrimination task (p &gt
0.05). Our results provide unique insight into how the brain processes visual signal of different experimental task, and will provide some basic data for human-robot signal processing.

DOI： 10.1109/ICMA.2017.8015850

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP  

Humans are able to judge the speed of an object's motion by touch. Research has suggested that tactile judgment of speed is influenced by physical properties of the moving object, though the neural mechanisms underlying this process remain poorly understood. In the present study, functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to investigate brain networks that may be involved in tactile speed classification and how such networks may be affected by an object's texture. Participants were asked to classify the speed of 2-D raised dot patterns passing under their right middle finger. Activity in the parietal operculum, insula, and inferior and superior frontal gyri was positively related to the motion speed of dot patterns. Activity in the postcentral gyrus and superior parietal lobule was sensitive to dot periodicity. Psycho-physiological interaction (PPI) analysis revealed that dot periodicity modulated functional connectivity between the parietal operculum (related to speed) and postcentral gyrus (related to dot periodicity). These results suggest that texture-sensitive activity in the primary somatosensory cortex and superior parietal lobule influences brain networks associated with tactually-extracted motion speed. Such effects may be related to the influence of surface texture on tactile speed judgment.

DOI： 10.1038/srep40931

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

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Language：English   Publishing type：Part of collection (book)   Publisher：IGI Global  

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been widely used to study human tactile perception. To reveal many unsolved problems to human tactile perception, developing complex and fMRI-compatible stimulation devices are crucial for tactile perception research. These stimulation devices, combined with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), can assist researchers in analyzing human brain activity. Through analyzing human brain activity, researchers can clarify how the human brain controls the body. Meanwhile, these device scan provide the best rehabilitation program for patients. This chapter presents previous fMRI-compatible stimulation devices, including texture stimulation, shape stimulation, vibrotactile stimulation, etc., which involve the hands, face, ears, legs and other parts of the body. In this chapter, we examine the design of the devices in greater detail. Finally, we summarize the characteristics of these devices and create an outlook for future fMRI-compatible devices.

DOI： 10.4018/978-1-5225-0925-7.ch012

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

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Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Bentham Science Publishers Ltd.  

DOI： 10.2174/2213385203666150703164036

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV  

The goal of this study was to investigate the effects of aging on pointing movements under restricted visual feedback of hand movement and target location. Fifteen young subjects and fifteen elderly subjects performed pointing movements under four restricted visual feedback conditions that included full visual feedback of hand movement and target location (FV), no visual feedback of hand movement and target location condition (NV), no visual feedback of hand movement (NM) and no visual feedback of target location (NT). This study suggested that Fitts' law applied for pointing movements of the elderly adults under different visual restriction conditions. Moreover, significant main effect of aging on movement times has been found in all four tasks. The peripheral and central changes may be the key factors for these different characteristics. Furthermore, no significant main effects of age on the mean accuracy rate under condition of restricted visual feedback were found. The present study suggested that the elderly subjects made a very similar use of the available sensory information as young subjects under restricted visual feedback conditions. In addition, during the pointing movement, information about the hand's movement was more useful than information about the target location for young and elderly subjects. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

DOI： 10.1016/j.humov.2014.11.009

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Bentham Science Publishers Ltd.  

DOI： 10.2174/2213385203666150804001349

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：FRONTIERS MEDIA SA  

The repetition of a stimulus task reduces the neural activity within certain cortical regions responsible for working memory (WM) processing. Although previous evidence has shown that repeated vibrotactile stimuli reduce the activation in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, whether the repeated tactile spatial stimuli triggered the priming effect correlated with the same cortical region remains unclear. Therefore, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a delayed match-to-sample task to investigate the contributions of the priming effect to tactile spatial WM processing. Fourteen healthy volunteers were asked to encode three tactile angle stimuli during the encoding phase and one tactile angle stimulus during the recognition phase. Then, they answered whether the last angle stimulus was presented during the encoding phase. As expected, both the Match and Non-Match tasks activated a similar cerebral network. The critical new finding was decreased brain activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), the right posterior parietal cortex (PPC) and bilateral medial frontal gym (mFG) for the match task compared to the Non-Match task. Therefore, we suggest that the tactile priming engaged repetition suppression mechanisms during tactile angle matching, and this process decreased the activation of the fronto-parietal circuit, including IFG, mFG and PPC.

DOI： 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00926

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC  

Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate the characteristics of pedal errors by younger and older drivers that relate to sudden unintended acceleration (SUA) accidents.
Background: SUA during an accident is a serious issue that causes numerous critical injuries and deaths every year. Previous studies have indicated that the major factor in these accidents is pedal error; however, the characteristics that relate to SUA accidents in older drivers remain unclear.
Method: Twenty younger drivers (YDs; 23.1 0.22 years) and 20 older drivers (ODs; 68.9 1.16 years) used either one or both feet to participate in six tasks that involved pressing accelerator or brake pedals in response to various visual stimuli.
Results: Both the reaction times (RTs) and the pedal error rates of the YD and OD groups significantly increased with the difficulty of the task. Other than the simple reaction condition, we found that the pedal error rates were significantly higher for the OD group than for the YD group; the OD group also demonstrated longer RTs. Moreover, the rates of accelerator error were consistently two or three times higher than the rates of brake error in both the YD and OD groups.
Conclusion: For the older population, the use of the left foot to operate the brake pedal and the right foot to operate the accelerator could decrease the accelerator error rate and may reduce the rate of SUA-related accidents that are caused by pedal error.

DOI： 10.1177/0018720813487200

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：SPRINGER-VERLAG ITALIA SRL  

Photophobia and phonophobia are the most prominent symptoms in patients with migraine without aura. Hypersensitivity to visual stimuli can lead to greater hypersensitivity to auditory stimuli, which suggests that the interaction between visual and auditory stimuli may play an important role in the pathogenesis of migraine. However, audiovisual temporal interactions in migraine have not been well studied. Therefore, our aim was to examine auditory and visual interactions in migraine.
In this study, visual, auditory, and audiovisual stimuli with different temporal intervals between the visual and auditory stimuli were randomly presented to the left or right hemispace. During this time, the participants were asked to respond promptly to target stimuli. We used cumulative distribution functions to analyze the response times as a measure of audiovisual integration.
Our results showed that audiovisual integration was significantly elevated in the migraineurs compared with the normal controls (p &lt; 0.05); however, audiovisual suppression was weaker in the migraineurs compared with the normal controls (p &lt; 0.05).
Our findings further objectively support the notion that migraineurs without aura are hypersensitive to external visual and auditory stimuli. Our study offers a new quantitative and objective method to evaluate hypersensitivity to audio-visual stimuli in patients with migraine.

DOI： 10.1186/1129-2377-15-44

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：ELSEVIER IRELAND LTD  

Visual word expertise is typically associated with enhanced ventral occipito-temporal (vOT) cortex activation in response to written words. Previous study utilized a passive viewing task and found that vOT response to written words was significantly stronger in literate compared to the illiterate subjects. However, recent neuroimaging findings have suggested that vOT response properties are highly dependent upon the task demand. Thus, it is unknown whether literate adults would show stronger vOT response to written words compared to illiterate adults during other cognitive tasks, such as perceptual matching. We addressed this issue by comparing vOT activations between literate and illiterate adults during a Chinese character and simple figure matching task. Unlike passive viewing, a perceptual matching task requires active shape comparison, therefore minimizing automatic word processing bias. We found that although the literate group performed better at Chinese character matching task, the two subject groups showed similar strong vOT responses during this task. Overall, the findings indicate that the vOT response to written words is not affected by expertise during a perceptual matching task, suggesting that the association between visual word expertise and vOT response may depend on the task demand. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

DOI： 10.1016/j.neulet.2014.02.032

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

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Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

DOI： 10.7144/sgf.21.1

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

To investigate the tactile numerosity judgments and position report by simultaneously presenting, we asked human subjects to answer the number and the location of eight vibrations presented to different fingertips on right hand. In numerosity judgments task, we found that the accuracy of participants' responses decreased as the number of stimuli activated was increased. And as the more stimulus presentation, the answer is smaller than the correct answer. In position report task, we found that index finger has higher accuracy of vibrotactile discrimination than the other fingers. Moreover, the sensitivity of distal phalanx part is higher than middle phalanx.

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

The connectivity between functionally distinct areas in the human brain is unknown because of the limitations posed by current postmortem anatomical labeling techniques. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has previously been used to define large white matter tracts based on well-known anatomical landmarks in the living human brain. In the present study, we used DTI coupled with functional magnetic resonance imaging ( fMRI) to assess neuronal connections between human striate and functionally defined human V6 areas. Functional areas were identified with conventional fMRI mapping procedures and then used as seeding points in a DTI analysis to ascertain connectivity patterns between cortical areas, thus yielding the pattern of connections.

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

Working memory are closely related to everyday cognition (such as remembering the conversation and characters). Studies with hearing, vision stimulation have always been carried out, but studies using tactile stimulation are very little. However, tactile working memory is the ability to reproduce the functionality of the somatosensory system. It is very relevant to elucidation of the somatosensory system and intellectual impairment of tactile. Moreover, Visual and Auditory task have possibilities affect education and living environment, such as number, language and so on. On the other hand, tactile stimulation task can research human cognition without the problem. However, tactile stimulation is presented by hand, so study of tactile working memory does not consider pressure information and influence result. Moreover, Active region of brain is changed from time to time in working memory, it must be considered too. Memory in order to investigate the tactile working memory, device for considering the pressure information and to present the tactile stimulation on constant conditions is indispensable. In this Study, we developed and evaluated a device for tactile spatial research in high magnetic field environment. Consideration to advanced research on fMRI environment in the future, we developed device in High magnetic field environment.

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV  

We developed a novel wide-view visual presentation system for fMRI studies. Computer-generated images were projected onto a hemispheric, translucent screen inside the MRI bore and were then back-projected onto a 52 mm diameter screen. To achieve a wide field view, a spherical screen with a curvature radius of 30 mm was placed 30 mm away from the subjects' eyes. The subjects wore contact lenses that enabled them to focus on the screen, and the resulting visual field reached 120 degrees. To evaluate the clarity and quality of the MM images, a signal-to-noise ratio valuation experiment was performed. In addition, we successfully applied this visual presentation system to studies of visual retinotopic mapping and object perception neural function in the peripheral visual field. Our study demonstrated that the system is compatible with the MM environment. Based on the wide-field mapping results, this system was more effective at mapping a checkerboard stimuli in V1-V3 from the central to peripheral visual fields. In higher-level visual areas, we successfully located several classical category-selective areas, including the face-selective area (FFA), occipital face area (OFA), house-selective area (PPA), transverse occipital sulcus (TOS), lateral occipital complex (LOC) and posterior fusiform area (pFs). In these areas, we found that the response amplitudes exhibited different decreasing trends with increasing eccentricity. In conclusion, we developed a simple, effective method for presenting wide-view visual stimuli within the MRI environment that can be applied to many kinds of fMRI studies of peripheral vision. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

DOI： 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2013.01.021

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

We have developed a novel automated device for assessing and training cognitive function on tactile senses. The device is capable of investigating tactile pattern discrimination. Tactile patterns are fixed to a conveyor belt and presented continuously to the subject. We used two gears to convert power from a stepping motor into a rotary movement of the belt. 16 different types of angle patterns can be presented in one diagnosis. Development of the device was intended to support our previous study about deficits in tactile discrimination because of aging and cognition disease, suggesting that the device provides a bright future for investigating cognitive function of touch discrimination. Expectantly, the device will be the medium to enable the future application for early diagnosis of dementia.

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

The operation of the touch screen is a typical pointing movement. Because touch screens has such a wide range of applications, the users of touch screen will necessarily include people of all age groups The variation in physical and psychomotor capability between different age groups which affect touch screen performance should, therefore, be studied to facilitate the design of touch screen user interface is necessary. The goal of the study was to examine the effect of aging on pointing movements under restricted visual feedback conditions (i.e., full-vision, no feedback about hand movement, no feedback about target location, and no visual feedback of any type). In light of the fact that different age groups exhibit different kinds of movement behaviour patterns, suggestions for the design of touch screen user interface were outlined.

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：SPRINGER-VERLAG BERLIN  

In present paper, we described a novel wide-view visual presentation system for fMRI studies. To achieve a wide field view, a translucent spherical screen with a curvature radius of 30 mm was placed 30 mm away from the subjects' eyes. The subjects wore contact lenses that enabled them to focus on the screen, and the resulting visual field reached 120 degrees. Then, high resolution computer-generated images were projected onto the translucent hemispheric screen inside the MRI bore. Signal-to-noise ratio valuation experiment was performed to evaluate the clarity and quality of the MRI images. In addition, we successfully applied this visual presentation system to studies of visual retinotopic mapping and object perception neural function in the peripheral visual field. Our study demonstrated that the system is compatible with the MRI environment. Moreover, this system was more effective at mapping checkerboard stimuli in V1-V3, and successfully located several classical category-selective areas, including the face-selective area (FFA), occipital face area (OFA), house-selective area (PPA), transverse occipital sulcus (TOS), lateral occipital complex (LOC) in higher-level visual areas. In conclusion, the wide-view visual presentation system within the MRI environment can be applied to many kinds of fMRI studies of peripheral vision.

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is the most common and destructive neurodegenerative disorder threatening old people. As a non-invasive way to assess brain function, the fMRI technique can be used to detect how the brain activity pattern of AD patients differ from that of age-matched elder controls (EC). We compared the brain activity pattern of AD and EC under three conditions: unimodal auditory stimuli, unimodal visual stimuli and bimodal audiovisual stimuli. It was found that patients with AD exhibit a more extensive but relatively weaker response than EC, and in every type of stimuli, the activated brain areas are dissimilar with EC. The limbic lobe of AD patients is universally silent while the hippocampal areas in EC are active. Moreover, compared with EC, AD patients show fewer activated regions for audiovisual integration, indicating impaired multisensory information processing and cognitive integration. The findings imply that fMRI can help with the diagnosis of AD even in the early stage.

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

The present study examined the coding of retinal eccentricity spatial position in object selective cortex. Using a wide-view (about 120 degrees) visual presentation system developed for vision research and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the subject were presented with face and house, which were centrally located along the horizontal and vertical meridian in 4 level of eccentricity degree. We investigated the BLOD response to stimuli in two regions in the ventral visual cortex, the fusiform face area (FFA), and the parahippocampal place area (PPA). The analysis further revealed the weaker BLOD response in the bigger eccentricity in both the FFA and PPA areas. Moreover, the FFA had much bigger neural activation than the PPA. However, the ratio relative to central position had no difference between face and house. Regions of the FFA had bigger neural response, and associated with central representation, compared to PPA had smaller neural response, and associated with more peripheral representation. These results suggested the neural response character in ventral visual areas influenced by inherent difference between face and house, and little by the eccentricity.

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Human have five senses which are visual, auditory, smell, touch and taste. The sense of touch is occurring when the skin contact with any object and human can percept the shape, temperature, vibration of the object. As well known, the spatial density of receptors located in the human skin differed of different parts such as index finger. Therefore, the sensitivity of each finger were differed from each other. In the present study, we developed a novel automatic vibrotactile patterns delivery device that is capable of perform the tactile cognitive experiment. It can serve to determining the sensitivity of each finger that contributes to tactile spatial discrimination. The primary device consists of eight piezo-electric units, slider, hand support and a controller. The device is controlled by a computer. To evaluate the performance of the device, we conducted a basic function test. The results indicated that the device can record reliable data and control the tactile pattern position precisely. Finally, ten young subjects consented to participate in the position discrimination tasks. The subjects were asked to detect the tactile stimuli and report the location. We found that index finger has higher accuracy of vibrotactile discrimination than the other fingers. Moreover, the sensitivity of distal phalanx part is higher than middle phalanx. © 2013 IEEE.

DOI： 10.1109/ICMA.2013.6617906

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Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Japan Ergonomics Society  

In this paper, the effects of stimulus eccentricity and luminance on linear vection (LV) were examined with healthy young subjects. Five kinds of blue sine-wave patterns with different spatial frequencies (0.023, 0.037, 0.057, 0.090, 0.141 cycle/deg) were used, and six luminance conditions were modulated respectively of the central and peripheral vision field. The results show that LV is affected by high luminance in central vision field when the spatial frequency is from 0.037 to 0.057 cycle/deg while it does not depend on peripheral vision luminance in any spatial frequencies used in this study.

DOI： 10.5100/jje.49.18

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：WILEY-BLACKWELL  

Intra-active touch (IAT) is a process that involves a body part doing the touching (active touch [AT]) and another body part being touched (passive touch [PT]) simultaneously. The brain representation related to IAT is still unclear. A total of 23 subjects carried out angle discrimination under PT, AT and IAT conditions with functional magnetic resonance imaging. All of the tasks were strictly dependent on cutaneous feedback from the finger(s). As the subjects were able to perceive the angle stimuli from the right (touching) and left (touched) sides during the IAT condition, we expected there would be greater brain activation with the IAT condition than for the AT or PT condition. Therefore, we hypothesized that the region within and/or around the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and the part of the primary somatosensory cortex (SI) that is associated with high-level tactile spatial processing would be more active during the IAT task than during the AT and PT tasks. Compared with the areas activated by the motor somatosensory control task, the most prominent activation areas evoked by the three-angle discrimination tasks were in the SI and secondary somatosensory cortex areas in the bilateral parietal operculum, IPS, lateral occipital complex, insula and cerebellum. Finally, we directly compared IAT with AT and PT, and the results suggest that the contralateral part of IPS and part of the SI are more active under IAT conditions than under either AT or PT conditions. These results suggest that both hemispheres contribute to angle discrimination during IAT. Hum Brain Mapp 33:2957-2970, 2012. (C) 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

DOI： 10.1002/hbm.21419

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：SPRINGER  

Chinese is a logographic language system that differs from alphabetic languages, and some of the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying Chinese logographic reading also differ from those underlying alphabetic word reading. However, whether education level effects the neural activation associated with logographic processing of Chinese is still unknown. In the present study, 11 Chinese illiterate and 11 literate (age-matched) subjects participated in an event-related fMRI experiment with Chinese character discrimination (CD) and figure discrimination (FD) tasks. All subjects were asked to view the character or figure pairs and discriminate whether the characters or figures of each stimuli pair were the same or not using response keys. Both literate and illiterate subjects activated a widely distributed cerebral network, including the bilateral inferior, middle and superior frontal gyri, superior temporal gyrus and parietal lobe, in the CD task. Finally, we directly compared the activations of literate subjects with illiterate subjects. The results suggest that the bilateral parts of the angular gyrus and supramarginal gyrus are more active for literate than illiterate subjects in the CD task. We found no significant group difference in the FD task. Therefore, the present results may indicate that education level effects the neural activation associated with the logographic processing of Chinese.

DOI： 10.1007/s00221-012-3094-8

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：INT INFORMATION INST  

Ebbinghaus illusion is commonly used as an example of a visual size-contrast effect. The aim of present study was to examine the effects of visual illusion performance on pointing movements. Twenty healthy subjects performed two pointing movement experiments with different visual illusion conditions. Central circular targets of five different sizes were presented on a large semitransparent screen. In experiment 1, subjects were asked to look at the visual targets first and adjust the size of the right central circle to match the left central circle. Next, subjects were asked to point to the right central circle as quickly and as accurately as possible. In experiment 2, all subjects were asked only to point to the right central circle in the same manner as in experiment 1 but without the previous size adjustment. The findings of the present study suggest that the Ebbinghaus illusion affects visual size perception but does not affect pointing movements. This result suggests that visual size illusion changes only the perceived size of visual stimuli during the movement-planning period but not online control processes.

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

When an object is touched, the properties like shape, temperature, rigidity, texture and weight should be perceived. As a basic research of human tactile, it is most important to know how humans could perceive the shape of the object by fingers. Thus length and contacting curvature of an object are thought to provide important perception information. But there are scarce perception studies using changed delay time on length discriminative experiment. In present study, to investigate the changed delay time during length discrimination experiment with thumb and forefinger for working memory, we develop a tactile length interface device for the experiment. We also divide the experimenters into two groups, the young people and old people to discuss that when we become older whether our performance on length discrimination drop down or constant. © 2012 IEEE.

DOI： 10.1109/ICCME.2012.6275646

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：IOS PRESS  

The human brain can anatomically combine task-relevant information from different sensory pathways to form a unified perception; this process is called multisensory integration. The aim of the present study was to test whether the multisensory integration abilities of patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) differed from those of normal aged controls (NC). A total of 64 subjects were divided into three groups: NC individuals (n = 24), MCI patients (n = 19), and probable AD patients (n = 21). All of the subjects were asked to perform three separate audiovisual integration tasks and were instructed to press the response key associated with the auditory, visual, or audiovisual stimuli in the three tasks. The accuracy and response time (RT) of each task were measured, and the RTs were analyzed using cumulative distribution functions to observe the audiovisual integration. Our results suggest that the mean RT of patients with AD was significantly longer than those of patients with MCI and NC individuals. Interestingly, we found that patients with both MCI and AD exhibited adequate audiovisual integration, and a greater peak (time bin with the highest percentage of benefit) and broader temporal window (time duration of benefit) of multisensory enhancement were observed. However, the onset time and peak benefit of audiovisual integration in MCI and AD patients occurred significantly later than did those of the NC. This finding indicates that the cognitive functional deficits of patients with MCI and AD contribute to the differences in performance enhancements of audiovisual integration compared with NC.

DOI： 10.3233/JAD-2012-111070

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Springer Science and Business Media LLC  

DOI： 10.1007/s13670-012-0007-4

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Other Link： http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13670-012-0007-4/fulltext.html

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

In the present study, using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) we measured the tactile memory related brain activations with tactile orientation discrimination task. For each trial, two of three tactile grating domes with same or different orientations (0, 45 and 90° against the proximal-distal line of right index finger) were presented to the subjects' right index fingertip. Nine health young subjects were asked to discriminate whether the orientations of two tactile stimuli was the same or not. Compared to the resting period, the most prominent activation areas evoked by the orientation discrimination tasks were in the primary and secondary somatosensory areas in the bilateral parietal operculum (SI and SII), posterior parietal cortex (PPC), prefrontal cortex (PFC), supplementary motor area (SMA), lateral occipital complex (LOC), insula and cerebellum. But we found that both of the activation in intensity and size were higher during tactile orientation discrimination process compared to these of encoding process. The result suggested that the tactile orientation discrimination process may raise more brain activations since this process include the high level processing such as recall and decision making. © 2012 IEEE.

DOI： 10.1109/ICCME.2012.6275749

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), one of the most popular forms of neuroimaging, uses MRI to measure the hemodynamic response related to neural activity. In the present study, we developed a tactile speed stimulator for fMRI environment. The device is MRI-compatible and can serve to investigate the underlying neural mechanisms of tactile speed discrimination. The primary components of the tactile speed stimulator system include a computer, two drums with dots, a motor controller and a reaction key. We evaluated the function, precision and performance of the system in a magnetic field. The results showed that the device performance is unaffected by the magnetic field, nor does the device interfere with the magnetic field, making it usable with fMRI. Furthermore, a simple pressing button in fMRI experiment was conducted using the system. Compared to the baseline, the most prominent activation areas evoked by the button press task were in the lobulus parietalis inferior, gyrus postcentralis, gyrus frontalis inferior and gyrus precentralis.In conclusion, these results indicated that the brain activation can be reliably detected with the present device. © 2012 IEEE.

DOI： 10.1109/ICCME.2012.6275623

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Motor vehicle accidents are one of the most important causes of deaths, hospitalizations, treatments and disabilities among non-intentional injuries in Japan. Sudden unintended acceleration (SUA) during an accident is a serious issue that leads to numerous cases of critical injuries and even death every year. In 2008, over 6,500 cases of SUA occurred in Japan, which resulted in the death or injury of approximately 10,000 people (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, Japan [MLIT], 2009). In this study, twenty young drivers (YDs) and twenty older drivers (ODs) participated in six accelerator or brake pedal press tasks with different visual stimuli under one foot or both feet. We recorded the reaction times (RTs) and pedal error rate for all the conditions. Both the RTs and the pedal error rate of both the YD and OD groups significantly increased with the difficulty of the task. Other than the simple reaction condition, we found that the pedal error rate of the OD group was significantly higher than that of the YD group
the OD group also had longer RTs. Moreover, the rate of accelerator error was consistently two or three times higher than the rate of brake error for both the YD and OD groups. We proposed that human decision making is one of the major factors that leads to pedal errors during driving. Moreover, the impairment in decision making observed in older drivers is one factor that might contribute to a high incidence of SUA-related accidents. © 2012 Intl Jrnal Advanced Mech.

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Language：Japanese   Publisher：(一社)日本認知症学会  

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Language：Japanese   Publisher：(一社)日本認知症学会  

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV  

We have developed a novel tactile presentation system for assessing and training cognitive function on tactile senses. The device is operational in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) environment and capable of investigating the underlying neural mechanisms of tactile pattern discrimination. The primary components of the system include a finger movement control unit (FCU), a disk for multiple tactile pattern delivery (DPD), and a force-sensing unit (FSU). An ultrasonic motor rotates the DPD to deliver different tactile patterns for cognitive sensitivity test. We evaluated the operational reliability and the performance of the system in a MRI environment. The results showed that the system performance was not affected by the magnetic field, nor did the system operation interfere with the magnetic field either. The results from the two functional MRI experiments also indicated that the brain activation can be reliably detected with the present system. Furthermore, a tactile pattern discrimination experiment was conducted using the system to investigate cognitive characteristics of shape discrimination under active and passive touch conditions. We found that the mean accuracy of discrimination under active touch was significantly higher than that under passive touch. The high accuracy and magnetic field compatibility of the device suggest that the device provides a powerful means of investigating the neural mechanisms of perception and cognitive function for touch discrimination. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

DOI： 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2011.06.030

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DOI： 10.1016/j.jalz.2011.05.774

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：INT INFORMATION INST  

Visual attention is crucial for selecting relevant information for visual perception and actions. The aim of present study was to investigate the effects of visual spatial attention cue on performance of pointing movements, and to determine whether Fitts&apos; law was applicable to pointing movements under different cued conditions. Ten healthy subjects were performed two pointing movement tasks with different uncued and spatial cueing conditions. The circular targets with seven kinds of different size were presented to upper, down, right, and left on the monitor randomly. The symbolic central cue consisting of a diamond was used to instruct "where" target stimuli would appeared. The findings of present study suggested the visual attention cues improved performance of pointing movement. In addition, the pointing movements were following to Fitts&apos;s law, even under different visual cueing conditions. Lastly, the location and size of target affect the pointing movement performance significantly.

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Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers  

Braille is one of the few writing systems that use tactile perception. The system is widely used by the blind to read and write. However, Braille is difficult to learn for persons with acquired blindness, especially for the elderly. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to design a tactile Japanese Katakana presentation device for the investigation of characteristics of tactile Katakana recognition. The device consists of a disk for tactile Katakana patterns, a force sensor unit for force measurement when subjects' fingers touch the tactile patterns, and an ultrasonic motor for tactile patterns presentation. Using the ultrasonic motor, the device presents characters to subjects quickly and automatically. Furthermore, the device has a big advantage that subjects are only required to move their fingers up and down, without any big submovements. An experiment was conducted using the device to test tactile recognition of 46 Katakana characters in native Japanese speakers with normal vision. Ten healthy right-handed male volunteers consented to participate in this experiment. Successful tactile Katakana recognition was higher than 78% (±14.4%) for these young subjects.

DOI： 10.1299/kikaic.77.923

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Two-dimensional shapes can be represented on a planar surface as a series of raised edges in which the spatial relationship among all the edges is crossed or parallel. Therefore, the size of the angle between two edges constitutes an important feature of these tactile stimuli. The purpose of present study was to confirm the human capacity for tactile discrimination among raised angles under object movement condition (i.e., hand is static and stimulus is floating). We used a raised angle consisting of five standard angles (30°, 60°, 90°, 120°, and 150°) and 10 comparison angles for each standard angle. In the present study, subjects were asked to identify the larger angle of each pair by object movement condition. The results indicate that the angle discrimination threshold increased as the standard angles increased as well as when the standard angles were smaller than 90°
however, discrimination thresholds remained stable when the standard angles were greater than 90°. We concluded that angle discrimination ability with regard to raised angles is determined by the percentage of impulse rates to which slowly adapting type I (SAI) and rapidly adapting type (RA) afferents respond. © 2011 IEEE.

DOI： 10.1109/ICCME.2011.5876795

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is one of the most recently developed forms of neuroimaging, uses MRI to measure the haemodynamic response related to neural activity. In the present study, we developed a tactile orientation stimulator using under high magnetic environment. The device is MRI-compatible and can serve to investigate the underlying neural mechanisms of tactile orientation cognition and discrimination. The primary components of the tactile orientation presentation system include a computer (system control), seven tactile orientation domes, two ultrasonic motors (tactile stimuli presentation), a motor controller and a reaction key. We evaluated the function, precision and performance of the system in a magnetic field. The results showed that the device performance is unaffected by the magnetic field, nor does the device interfere with the magnetic field, making it usable with fMRI. Furthermore, a simple button press fMRI experiment was conducted using the system. Compared to the baseline, the most prominent activation areas evoked by the button press task were in the primary motor area on the right precentral gyrus, bilateral medial frontal gyrus, putamen and cerebellum. In summary, these results indicated that the brain activation can be reliably detected with the present device. © 2011 IEEE.

DOI： 10.1109/ICCME.2011.5876797

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Language：English   Publishing type：Part of collection (book)   Publisher：IGI Global  

The cognitive symptoms in early Alzheimer's disease (AD) involve problems with learning, memory or planning. Currently, no medical tests are available to conclusively diagnose dementia pre-mortem. Previous studies have demonstrated that the cognitive deficits of AD can be detected during a preclinical period with neuropsychological tests. This chapter's hypothesis is that cognitive deficit symptoms of AD are detectable using a combination of tactile, kinetic, cognitive, and functional MRI tasks in the earliest stages of the disease. The authors of this chapter offer a novel approach to investigate the early detection of AD with tactile procedures. This chapter introduces the development of two tactile pattern delivery devices. The first delivery device is MRI-compatible and can serve to investigate the underlying neural mechanisms of active and passive tactile pattern discrimination. The second delivery device is designed to investigate the characteristics of passive shape discrimination for psychological experiments. These devices may contribute to the early detection of AD with neuropsychological approaches. The ultimate goal of this research was to confirm the human ability of tactile shape discrimination and determine the differences between age-matched healthy individuals and AD patients. © 2011, IGI Global.

DOI： 10.4018/978-1-60960-559-9.ch011

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Publisher：The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers  

Driver safety is an important and often sensitive issue for seniors. Statistics show that the elderly are more likely than other drivers to receive traffic citations for failing to yield, turning improperly, and running red lights and stop signs all indications of decreased driving ability. Currently in Japan, half of the deceased in traffic accidents are elderly people. In present study, we focused on how the pedal placement affect on braking action in emergency. First, ten healthy young and ten elderly individuals were asked to perform a simple reaction experiment by foot. Then, the same subjects were instructed to complete a braking action experiment with different pedal placement condition. The results suggested that both simple reaction time and foot movement time of elderly subjects were significantly longer than that of young subjects. Moreover, the brake pedal force of elderly subjects was lower than that of young subjects. Thus, aging influenced both of simple reaction time and braking action in emergency. In addition, even the pedal placement changed characteristics of braking action of both young and elderly subjects, the most comfortable pedal placement of elderly subjects differed from young subjects.

DOI： 10.1299/kikaic.77.2062

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV  

Fitts' law robustly predicts the time required to move rapidly to a target. However, it is unclear whether Fitts' law holds for visually guided actions under visually restricted conditions. We tested whether Fitts' law applies under various conditions of visual restriction and compared pointing movements in each condition. Ten healthy participants performed four pointing movement tasks under different visual feedback conditions, including full-vision (FV), no-hand-movement (NM), no-target-location (NT), and no-vision (NV) feedback conditions. The movement times (MTs) for each task exhibited highly linear relationships with the index of difficulty (r(2) &gt; .96). These findings suggest that pointing movements follow Fitts' law even when visual feedback is restricted or absent. However, the MTs and accuracy of pointing movements decreased for difficult tasks involving visual restriction. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

DOI： 10.1016/j.humov.2010.03.009

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：INT INFORMATION INST  

To expand the repertoire of somatosensory functions that can be effectively studied through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we have developed a tactile pattern delivery device which can deliver varied combinations of stimulation under active, passive and dual touch models. The device includes one pattern presentation disc driven by an ultrasonic motor, one set of fingers position control unit and one reaction key. The results of two evaluation tasks indicated that present device was working stable in the magnet room and did not induced any concerned interference to the echo planar imaging (EPI) images.

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Human computer interface (HCI) is often regarded as the intersection of computer science, behavioral sciences, design and several other fields of study. In order to improve the usability of HCI, investigation of the interaction between human and computers is an important issue. In present study, we use a pointing movement experimental device with visual feedback control function which developed in our companion research to investigate the human movement characteristics. Fitts' law is a successful model of human movement that predicts the time required to rapidly move to a target. According to Fitts' law, the relationship between the movement time (MT) and the index of difficulty (ID) can be demonstrated as a linear function. Here, we designed a series of rectangle boxes as using in Fitts' study as pointing stimuli. Ten subjects were asked to do pointing movement with different visual feedback conditions. The findings of present study suggest that the pointing performance was not only depending on the size of targets but also the quantity of visual feedback information. Therefore, both visual feedback and target size need to considered for HCI design. ©2010 IEEE.

DOI： 10.1109/ICINFA.2010.5512459

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

The Braille system is a method that is widely used by blind people to read and write. Braille is one of the few writing systems where tactile perception is used. Tactile display devices stimulate the skin to generate these sensations of contact. Then, human can perceived shape on their skin. However, one important issue of Braille is that that is difficult to learn, especially for older. Therefore, we designed tactile Japanese Katakana presentation device to investigate the characteristics of tactile Katakana perception in present study. Katakana is a syllabic writing system in which each symbol represents a syllable. All of Japanese Katakana are characterized by short, straight strokes and angular corners, and are the simplest of the Japanese scripts. We used the plastic material to build the device and ultrasonic motors to deliver the tactile Katakana patterns. The system consists of a primary device, a personal computer, a motor controller and an electronic amplifier unit connected to the output of the force sensor. Ten healthy right-handed male volunteers (native Japanese speakers) consented to participate in the evaluation experiment. Subjects were asked to touch each of 46 characters and verbally identify what the katakana is. These results of evaluation experiment suggested that the system can serve as a tactile presentation device for cognitive experiment. © 2010 IEEE.

DOI： 10.1109/ICCME.2010.5558861

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

In this article, we introduced some topics relevant to neuromedical engineering and used several measurement methods. In the future, we will continue to develop new technologies and search for new ideas for diagnosing neuropathies. © 2010 IEEE.

DOI： 10.1109/ICCME.2010.5558882

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：SPRINGER-VERLAG BERLIN  

Braille is one of the few reading systems where tactile perception is used. However, one important issue of Braille is that that is difficult to learn, especially for elderly. Thus, there is a need to develop a new reading system which presents letters directly for blind people. The aim of present study is to investigate the human characteristics of katakana recognition by active touch for tactile reading system development. In present experiment, ten healthy young subjects were asked to recognize 46 Japanese katakana by active touch. The raised-Japanese katakana characters were made of Duralumin, and the height of these stimuli were 10mm. Subjects were instructed to touch the katakana stimuli with their right index finger without large submovement. The mean accuracy of all young subjects was over 80%, and the mean reaction time was about 27.3 s. Our results indicated that the mean accuracy was decreased with similarity increased. However, several differences with regard to high accuracy under high similarity pair conditions need to be considered.

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：IOS PRESS  

There is a need to differentiate between patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer&apos;s disease (AD) from normal-aged controls (NC) in the field of clinical drug discovery. In this study, we developed a tactile angle discrimination system and examined whether the ability to discriminate tactile angle differed between patients with MCI and AD and the NC group. Thirty-seven subjects were divided into three groups: NC individuals (n - 14); MCI patients (n - 10); and probable AD patients (n = 13). All subjects were asked to differentiate the relative sizes of the reference angle (60 degrees) and one of eight comparison angles by passive touch. The accuracy of angle discrimination was measured and the discrimination threshold was calculated. We discovered that there were significant differences in the angle discrimination thresholds of AD patients compared to the NC group. Interestingly, we also found that ability to discriminate tactile angle of MCI patients were significantly lower than that of the NC group. This is the first study to report that patients with MCI and AD have substantial performance deficits in tactile angle discrimination compared to the NC individuals. This finding may provide a monitor and therapeutic approach in AD diagnosis and treatment.

DOI： 10.3233/JAD-2010-100723

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：PION LTD  

The characteristics of raised-line drawing discrimination can be defined as the sum of the discriminability of the length, curvature, and angles of the edges. The size of the angle between two edges constitutes an important feature of these tactile stimuli. In the first experiment, five standard angles (30 degrees, 60 degrees, 90 degrees, 120 degrees, and 150 degrees) and twenty comparison angles for each standard angle were used to investigate the human capacity for tactile discrimination of raised angles by passive finger movement. The subjects in this study were asked to identify the larger angle of each pair by passive finger movement. We found that the threshold doubled when the standard angle was increased from 30 degrees to 90 degrees; however, the threshold remained unchanged when the standard angle was greater than 90 degrees. In the second experiment, to investigate the influence of the endpoints on angle discriminability, we used one standard angle (60 degrees) and seven comparison angles that changed in four bisector orientations. The results indicate that cutaneous feedback from the local apex and endpoints of the angle contributed to the discrimination of acute angles. Taken together, these results suggest that, when an acute angle is presented, both local apex and endpoint informations are used, while cutaneous mechanoreceptors rely more on apex information to discriminate the angle size when an obtuse angle is presented.

DOI： 10.1068/p6264

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

In present study, we developed a pointing movement experimental device with visual feedback control function that is capable of perform the cognitive psychological procedure relate to own hand movements. It can serve to determining the human characteristics of pointing movement with or without visual feedback restriction. The main part of present device consists of a touch monitor, one set of light control glass, a relay switch electric circuit and computer. The subjects can do the pointing movement on the touch monitor and the visual feedback restriction will carry out with a combination of light control glass and relay switch. In addition, all the control and measurement can be completed by the computer. However, present device can not realize the targets overlapping on the light control glass and touch monitor by bilateral ocular, owing to the human visual characteristics. So we compared pointing movement with bilateral ocular and lateral ocular with ten subjects. The results indicate that there is no significant difference between do pointing movement with bilateral and lateral ocular. Finally, ten young subjects consented to participate in a full vision and a vision restricted pointing movement tasks with lateral ocular. The results suggest that although the visual feedback was restricted, the pointing movement depend on the index difficulty of targets.

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

Certain learning the symptoms of earliest Alzheimer's disease (AD) involved learning, memory or planning problems. Currently, no medical tests are available to diagnose AD conclusively pre-mortem. However, a large number of Kungsholmen Project studies used cognitive tasks (i.e. visuospatial tasks, language tasks, etc.) attempted to find the preclinical cognitive marks of AD. These studies convincingly demonstrate that the cognitive deficits of AD are possible to detect during a preclinical period spans several years. In addition, numerous neuropathological, electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies supports the hypothesis that the cognitive deficits in AD is related to a possible disconnection between cortical areas. In present article, we describe the present and future researches of early diagnosis method through cognitive and functional imaging testing to help with the clinical diagnosis.

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

We have developed a novel tactile pattern presentation device to assess tactile cognitive function by active, passive and dual touch. The device is magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) compatible and can serve to investigate the underlying neural mechanisms of tactile pattern discrimination. The primary components of the system are one disk for pattern presentation (DPP) driven by an ultrasonic motor, one set of fingers position control unit and one reaction key pad. In order to evaluate the performance of the presentation device, two functional MRI tasks were executed. First, we used MRI-Phantom to test the practicability of the tactile pattern presentation device. Second, we designed a tactile raised line cognitive task wit five young subjects to investigate the brain activity areas concerning tactile shape cognition by dual touch. The results suggested that this device to be unaffected by the magnetic field, and the brain imaging results were consistent with previous neuroimaging study. The most significantly of present study is that the device provides a powerful means of investigating neural mechanisms of perception and cognitive function for touch discrimination.

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DOI： 10.1299/kikaic.74.2585

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)   Publisher：IEEE  

We are especially interested in the human ability to recognize shape using the delayed matching paradigm in active and passive touch studies. To investigate the characteristics of shape recognition, stimulus presentation control is very important because a subtle difference in the stimulus presentation win influence the results. In this study, we propose a new device that precisely controls the stimulus presentation and performs psychobehavioral measurements in haptics studies. And we also conducted an active/passive shape discrimination experiment to evaluate the performance of the device. Twenty right-handed students consented to participate in the experiment. The results suggest that the device might serve as a comprehensive haptic device that allows different types of haptic stimuli to be presented precisely to subjects to measure various psychobehavioral parameters.

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In recent years, the remote control robots have used in various dangerous environments instead of human. Because there is a discrepancy between the physical and perceived distance, it is difficult for us to use the remote control robots. In order to solve this problem, we investigated the psychophysical characteristics of human distance perception. In this study, young and elder subjects estimate the actively and passively presented distance using upper arm. The experimental results offer the useful knowledge about improvements in the operation of remote control robots. ©2005 IEEE.

DOI： 10.1109/AMT.2005.1505260

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Language：Japanese   Publisher：The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers  

Reading in a second language (L2) is a complex task that involves an interaction between L2 and the native language (LI). To investigate the fundamental mechanisms, this study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to visualize Japanese-Chinese bilinguals' brain activity in semantic processing of Chinese and Japanese characters, whose form are similar. We asked 13 Japanese-Chinese bilinguals to judge whether or not a presented pair of Chinese or Japanese characters had same semantics or font size. Semantic and orthographic association judgments were made to a pair of two-character words that were presented sequentially in the visual modality. In an fMRI experiment, we found Japanese-Chinese bilinguals showed activation in middle occipital gyrus in Japanese. And we also found they showed activation in left middle/inferior frontal gyrus which were known to be associated with semantic processing, left supplementary motor area which was known to solve language conflict on semantic tasks in Chinese. These findings were not consistent with previous studies that language experience tuned the cortex. But we found language conflict happened in Chinese task. This finding suggests language conflict affected Chinese task, and we think our fMRI experiment results changed from original results because of language conflict. So we think we need to remove language conflict when we conduct an fMRI experiment for bilinguals.

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Language：English   Publisher：福田記念医療技術振興財団  

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Other Link： http://search.jamas.or.jp/link/ui/2015118678

Language：Japanese   Publisher：The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers  

In present study, we developed a tactile speed patterns presentation device that is capable of perform the tactile speed perception and discrimination experiments. It can serve to determining the underlying central neural mechanisms that contribute to tactile speed perception and discrimination. The device consists of two dots stimulus discs, one stepping motor, one motor controller and one computer. We used energy from the stepping motor to rotate the dots stimulus discs to present the different tactile speeds. The information related to rotating speed and time will be recorded with the computer. Then, five healthy subjects were asked to conduct a tactile speed estimation experiment using present device. The results indicated that the subjects underestimate the perceived tactile speed compare to the standard speed.

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Language：Japanese   Publisher：The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers  

In present study, we developed a pointing movement experimental device with visual feedback control function that is capable of perform the cognitive psychological procedure relate to own hand movements. It can serve to determining the human characteristics of pointing movement with or without visual feedback restriction. The main part of present device consists of a touch monitor, one set of light control glass, a relay switch electric circuit and computer. The subjects can do the pointing movement on the touch monitor and the visual feedback restriction will carry out with a combination of light control glass and relay switch. Finally, we performed a vision restricted pointing movement task with lateral ocular. The results suggest that although the visual feedback was restricted, the pointing movement depend on the index difficulty of targets.

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Language：Japanese   Publisher：The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers  

CiNii Article

CiNii Books

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Language：Japanese   Publisher：The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers  

CiNii Article

CiNii Books

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Language：Japanese  

CiNii Article

CiNii Books

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Presentation type：Poster presentation  

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Presentation type：Oral presentation (keynote)  

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Presentation type：Oral presentation (invited, special)  

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Presentation type：Oral presentation (invited, special)  

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Presentation type：Oral presentation (invited, special)  

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Presentation type：Oral presentation (invited, special)  

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Presentation type：Oral presentation (invited, special)  

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Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (invited, special)  

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