Haptic Identification of Virtual Surfaces

描述(申请人提供)：日常任务，如处理和操纵物体，可能会给中风幸存者带来困难的挑战。我们大脑控制手臂运动的方式可能会受到我们与物体相互作用的经验以及它们的机械和动力学特性的影响。在到达移动过程中，关于表面和障碍物的信息被隐含地合并到我们的行动中。为了了解人类如何通过触摸获得触觉信息，已经进行了大量研究。为了理解我们是如何产生伸展动作的，也进行了大量的工作。虽然这些主题本身对理解我们如何与环境互动很重要，但很明显，真正理解环境互动包括同时整合触觉互动以及到达运动中涉及的神经过程。然而，了解触觉如何影响运动的工作很少。这项提案将研究接触夹具时的伸展运动所涉及的神经过程。我的目标是将触觉研究和运动控制研究纳入一个统一的概念框架。我假设，触觉与表面的相互作用可以用神经系统两个不同的运动基元的组合来描述：一个位置控制基元和一个力控制基元。这项提议将提供实验和计算模型，以确定这些原语是否确实存在于神经系统中，以及这些原语是否可以被训练来增强触觉。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Everyday tasks, such as handling and manipulating objects, may pose difficult challenges for survivors of stroke. The way in which our brain controls arm movements is likely to be shaped by our experience of interactions with objects and their mechanical and dynamic properties. During reaching movements information about surfaces and obstacles is implicitly incorporated into our actions. Much research has been performed to understand how humans acquire haptic information through touch. There has also been a great deal of work performed to understand how we generate reaching movements. While each of these topics in and of itself is important to understand how we interact with our environment, it is evident that true understanding of environmental interaction involves the simultaneous incorporation of the neural processes involved in haptic interaction as well as reaching movement. However, very little work has been performed to understand how movement is effected by haptic sense. This proposal will examine the neural processes involved during reaching movements in contact with fixtures. My goal is to bring haptic research and motor control research into a unified conceptual framework. I hypothesize that haptic interactions with surfaces can be described by the nervous system's combination of two distinct motor primitives: a position control primitive and a force control primitive. This proposal will present experiments and computational modeling to establish if these primitives do in fact exist in the nervous system, and if these primitives may be trained to enhance haptic perception.