担当区分：責任著者   記述言語：日本語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）  

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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）  

DOI： 10.1126/sciadv.aav9053

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掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：American Physiological Society  

Perceptual learning is not always specific to the trained task and stimuli. We demonstrate that both continuous attended sensory input and improved WM capacity can be used to enhance tactile angle discrimination (TAD) ability. Moreover, WM capacity improvement is important in generalizing the training effect to the TAD ability. These findings contribute to understanding the mechanism of perceptual learning generalization across tasks.

DOI： 10.1152/jn.00529.2021

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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：Elsevier BV  

DOI： 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118867

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担当区分：責任著者   記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：Springer Science and Business Media LLC  

Abstract

Previous studies have paid special attention to the relationship between local features (e.g., raised dots) and human roughness perception. However, the relationship between global features (e.g., curved surface) and haptic roughness perception is still unclear. In the present study, a series of roughness estimation experiments was performed to investigate how global features affect human roughness perception. In each experiment, participants were asked to estimate the roughness of a series of haptic stimuli that combined local features (raised dots) and global features (sinusoidal-like curves). Experiments were designed to reveal whether global features changed their haptic roughness estimation. Furthermore, the present study tested whether the exploration method (direct, indirect, and static) changed haptic roughness estimations and examined the contribution of global features to roughness estimations. The results showed that sinusoidal-like curved surfaces with small periods were perceived to be rougher than those with large periods, while the direction of finger movement and indirect exploration did not change this phenomenon. Furthermore, the influence of global features on roughness was modulated by local features, regardless of whether raised-dot surfaces or smooth surfaces were used. Taken together, these findings suggested that an object’s global features contribute to haptic roughness perceptions, while local features change the weight of the contribution that global features make to haptic roughness perceptions.

DOI： 10.1007/s00221-021-06289-0

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その他リンク： https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00221-021-06289-0/fulltext.html

掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：IOP Publishing  

DOI： 10.1088/1741-2552/ac2c9e

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その他リンク： https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1741-2552/ac2c9e/pdf

掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/icma52036.2021.9512736

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掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/icma52036.2021.9512687

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掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/icma52036.2021.9512762

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担当区分：責任著者   記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：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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その他リンク： http://downloads.spj.sciencemag.org/cbsystems/2021/9843259.xml

記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：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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その他リンク： http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/21582440211031549

掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：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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掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：Springer Science and Business Media LLC  

DOI： 10.3758/s13414-020-02168-y

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その他リンク： http://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13414-020-02168-y/fulltext.html

掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：Inderscience Publishers  

DOI： 10.1504/ijma.2021.115241

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掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers  

DOI： 10.1299/jsmecs.2021.59.01a2

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掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers  

DOI： 10.1299/jsmecs.2021.59.01a1

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掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：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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その他リンク： http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/2041669520981096

掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/icma49215.2020.9233599

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掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/icma49215.2020.9233631

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掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/icma49215.2020.9233761

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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）  

DOI： 10.3758/s13414-020-02001-6

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その他リンク： http://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13414-020-02001-6/fulltext.html

記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）  

DOI： 10.1177/0301006620936473

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その他リンク： http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/0301006620936473

掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：Inderscience Publishers  

DOI： 10.1504/ijma.2020.108795

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掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/icma.2019.8815967

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掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/icma.2019.8816393

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掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/icma.2019.8816531

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掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/icma.2019.8816326

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掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：IEEE  

DOI： 10.1109/icma.2019.8816525

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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）  

DOI： 10.1177/0301006619847579

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担当区分：責任著者   記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）  

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担当区分：責任著者   記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）  

DOI： 10.1155/2018/1648017

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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）  

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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）  

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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）  

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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：論文集(書籍)内論文   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）  

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掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：Bentham Science Publishers Ltd.  

DOI： 10.2174/2213385203666150703164036

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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）  

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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：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 < 0.05); however, audiovisual suppression was weaker in the migraineurs compared with the normal controls (p < 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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）  

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記述言語：日本語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）  

DOI： 10.7144/sgf.21.1

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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）  

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記述言語：日本語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：Japan Ergonomics Society  

人間の視野に，一定条件の運動視覚情報を与えることによって，身体が静止状態であるにもかかわらず，自己運動感覚を引き起こすことがある．このことを視覚誘導自己運動感覚と言う．視覚誘導自己運動感覚（Vection）は自己運動感覚の方向によって，大きく二種類に分けられ，視覚誘導自己直線運動感覚（LV：Linear Vection）と視覚誘導自己回転運動感覚（CV：Circular Vection）がある．Vectionの誘導メカニズムを解明するには，時空間周波数と視野などの視覚刺激パラメータの依存性がよく研究されたが，Vectionの輝度依存性はまだ解明されていない．本研究では，大型平面液晶ディスプレイを用いて，LVの空間特性の輝度依存性について検討を行った．その結果，LVは視覚刺激の中心視野の平均輝度変化に有意差が見られ，周辺視野の輝度変化に依存しないことがわかった．

DOI： 10.5100/jje.49.18

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その他リンク： https://jlc.jst.go.jp/DN/JALC/10015737372?from=CiNii

記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）  

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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）  

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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）  

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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）  

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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）  

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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記述言語：日本語   出版者・発行元：(一社)日本認知症学会  

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記述言語：日本語   出版者・発行元：(一社)日本認知症学会  

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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：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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掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：Wiley  

DOI： 10.1016/j.jalz.2011.05.774

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その他リンク： https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full-xml/10.1016/j.jalz.2011.05.774

記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：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' 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'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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記述言語：日本語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）  

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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）  

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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：論文集(書籍)内論文   出版者・発行元：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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出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：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) > .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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）  

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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：IOS PRESS  

There is a need to differentiate between patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer'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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）  

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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）  

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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：日本語   掲載種別：研究論文（学術雑誌）  

DOI： 10.1299/kikaic.74.2585

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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）   出版者・発行元：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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記述言語：英語   掲載種別：研究論文（国際会議プロシーディングス）  

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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記述言語：日本語   出版者・発行元：一般社団法人日本機械学会  

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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記述言語：英語   出版者・発行元：福田記念医療技術振興財団  

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その他リンク： http://search.jamas.or.jp/link/ui/2015118678

記述言語：日本語   出版者・発行元：一般社団法人日本機械学会  

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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記述言語：日本語   出版者・発行元：一般社団法人日本機械学会  

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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記述言語：日本語   出版者・発行元：一般社団法人日本機械学会  

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記述言語：日本語   出版者・発行元：一般社団法人日本機械学会  

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記述言語：英語   会議種別：口頭発表（一般）  

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記述言語：英語   会議種別：口頭発表（招待・特別）  

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