The Variability of Psychophysical Parameters Following Surface and Subdermal Stimulation: A Multiday Study in Amputees
Summary (3 min read)
I. INTRODUCTION
- Round 1.6 million people were living with limb amputation in the year 2005, and it has been estimated that 3.6 million people will be living with amputation in the United States of America by the year 2050 [1] .
- For upper limb prosthetic users, the absence of sensory feedback impedes the efficient use of their prostheses, which can lead to user frustration and abandonment of the device [2] .
- The feedback can be restored through invasive methods as well, i.e. by electrically stimulating peripheral nerves [10] .
- The information about grasping force, slippage [12] , hand aperture [13] , finger flexion [14] , and elbow angle has been previously encoded and transmitted through sensory feedback [7] , [15] .
- Subdermal stimulation can lead to substantially more compact feedback interfaces, since it is based on point electrodes (wire tip), and it can substantially decrease the required voltage and current consumption because skin impedance is bypassed.
A. Subjects
- Subjects provided written informed consent and the study adhered to the Helsinki Declaration.
- All subjects had undergone traumatic amputation of their dominant hand/arm.
- None of the subjects abused cannabis, opioids or other drugs.
- One subject was excluded from the study because a pain threshold could not be reached even with a current amplitude of 40 mA (the highest possible current to deliver) and at that high stimulation level, strong muscle twitches were evoked.
B. Experiment procedure
- A single session was performed each day for seven consecutive days.
- The psychophysical measurements were collected in the order of DT, PT, JND and sensation evaluation in each session.
- All seven sessions were scheduled at the same time of the day.
- The surface electrodes were disposed following each session.
- This protocol was selected to mimic the real-life application in which the surface electrodes are reapplied with each donning and doffing, while the subdermal electrodes will be placed permanently.
C. Stimulation
- A programmable stimulator (ISIS Neurostimulator, Inomed, Germany) was used to generate biphasic, rectangular, symmetric pulses with a pulse width of 200 μs.
- The stimulator was controlled by a custom-made program implemented in LabVIEW version 2015 running on a laptop.
- The subdermal wire electrodes were made of Teflon-coated stainless steel (A-M Systems, Carlsborg WA, diameter 50 µm), with 5-mm tip exposed [21] .
- Each subject was checked to see if the stump of his forearm had enough normal skin (the skin without any visible scar and any abnormal sensation) for electrode placement.
- The surface electrode was placed just next to the wire (Fig. 1 ).
D. Psychophysical measurements 1) Detection threshold and pain threshold
- The smallest stimulus that can be detected by the subject is called DT.
- This amplitude was then used as the initial amplitude in the staircase procedure.
- During the staircase testing, a series of stimuli were delivered to the subjects with the amplitude that was adjusted adaptively based on subject responses.
- If the subject detected the stimulus, the amplitude was increased, otherwise decreased (in steps of 0.03-0.05 mA for surface and 0.01-0.03 mA for subdermal stimulation).
- The DT was computed as the average of the last seven reversals.
) Just noticeable difference
- The smallest change in the stimulus amplitude that can be detected by a subject is called the JND.
- The pairs of pulses were delivered until the subject reported that he could feel the difference in the intensity.
- According to Weber's law, the WF should be approximately constant, and therefore, it can be used to estimate the JND for different baselines.
- To describe the location of the perception, the subjects could select one of the three options, namely, 'local', 'radiation' and 'referred'.
- Finally, the selection ratios (average scores of the 3 stimulation sequences) were used for data analysis for the sensation quality and sensation location of each item.
E. Data analysis
- The coefficient of variation (CoV) was computed to evaluate the variability of DT, PT, WF, DR, intensity, and comfort across seven days.
- Then, the parametric paired sample ttest was used to compare CoVs between the surface and subdermal stimulation if the data were normally distributed, otherwise, the non-parametric Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used.
- The CoV values were expressed in percent.
- In both cases, post hoc pairwise tests (Tukey's HSD criterion) were performed if a significant difference was detected across days.
- Statistics were performed using IBM SPSS version 25 except the Skilling-Mack test, which was performed using Statext v3.0.
A. PT, DT, and DR
- There was a significant difference (p ˂ 0.05) between the surface and subdermal stimulation in the CoVs of both DT and PT.
- Therefore, both DT and PT were more variable in the case of subdermal stimulation.
- There was a significant difference (p ˂ 0.05) between the surface and subdermal stimulation in the CoVs of the DR.
- Therefore, DR was more variable across seven days in subdermal stimulation.
B. WF (JND)
- There was no significant difference between the surface (64.66 ± 45.52 %) and subdermal stimulation (37.90 ± 7.13 %), likely due to high variability of the CoVs across subjects in surface stimulation.
- There was no significant change in the mean WF of both surface and subdermal stimulation across the seven days, which means that both surface and subdermal stimulation were stable across days (no systematic trends).
C. Evoked sensation 1) Quality of sensation and perceived location
- The sensation quality and perceived location for surface and subdermal stimulation exhibited a similar degree of variability across the seven days (p > 0.05 for all).
- As shown in Fig. 6 , the selection ratios of pressure, vibration, tingling and movement for surface stimulation seem to be higher than for subdermal stimulation, while there is an opposite trend for the selection ratios of pinprick and warm sensations.
IV. DISCUSSION
- Two aspects of the psychophysical measurements were explored, one is variability (CoV) and the other is the stability of the mean (systematic trend).
- Therefore, the environment in the tissue around the electrode might have changed, thereby influencing the psychophysical measurements.
- In fact, there was no re-insertion of the subdermal electrode during the seven days, as the re-insertion would be an additional source of variability.
- It provides chronic placement with a simple procedure (needle insertion).
- As demonstrated here, both subdermal and surface stimulation are stable (no systematic change) but the psychometric parameters of the subdermal stimulation exhibit more intrinsic variability.
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References
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Q2. What are the future works in this paper?
Hence, the present study provides important information for future clinical applications of this approach.