Seeing How You Feel: Multisensory Enhancement Of Touch In Ageing

触觉对于感觉形状、纹理和材料很重要，对于辨别肮脏和干净的表面、平衡和它可以唤起详细的记忆或情感很重要。能够分辨表面的形状和细节对于识别钱包中的硬币、检测布料的质量或磨损、或者检测盘子或表面上的细小污垢等任务非常重要。从手指上的皮肤接收高质量的信息有助于穿衣(特别是纽扣或扣子)、粘贴邮票或标签以及识别物体或形状。通过指尖感知振动的能力对于感知木材或纸张等表面的精细细节非常重要，并越来越多地被用于丰富触摸屏的体验。在我们最近与(健康)老年人举办的艺术家促进的系列研讨会中，有人评论说，一个没有丰富触觉体验的世界是平淡和乏味的。触觉知觉随着年龄的增长而下降。我们才刚刚开始了解这是如何发生的，但我们知道皮肤会随着年龄的增长变得更加干燥和缺乏弹性，皮肤中受体的数量和密度也会减少。触摸的神经和大脑皮层机制也有损失。即使在其他方面健康的人中，也有许多经验可以降低触摸敏感性(如中风、神经退行性疾病、疤痕和老茧)。不太清楚的是，这对触摸体验和日常活动有何影响。在这个项目中，我们的目标是将来自爱尔兰和英国的专家聚集在一起，解决如何测量和理解触觉，特别是关于衰老的问题。这两个国家有互补的活动和专长。一方面，爱尔兰有宝贵的纵向数据集和多学科的分析团队，提供关于老龄化过程对感官和多感官感知的作用的见解(例如，爱尔兰老龄化纵向研究(Tilda)、独立生活技术(TRIL)项目)。另一方面，在英国，有一些团队从行为和心理上研究触摸敏感性，并结合计算模型进行研究。这个项目将汇集来自这些领域的专家，以及来自行业的感兴趣的各方和那些有生活经验的人的关键意见，以解决触摸方面的研究。我们已将对触摸的多感官影响确定为一个特定的重点领域。仅仅是能够看到被触摸的物品就可以提高人们辨别被触摸表面的差异的能力。重要的是，即使表面的细节不可见，这也是正确的。我们还知道，一些表面在被抚摸或摩擦时会发出特有的声音，这也会影响它们的手感：例如，嘎吱或皱纹会使表面看起来更粗糙或更刺挠。这可能是有价值的，因为我们的目标是增强或改善老年人或触摸感知能力较弱的人的触摸体验。随着年龄的增长，我们更有可能自动组合来自多个感官的信息，因此研究多感官触摸是有希望的。在这个项目中，我们计划以研究为重点的研讨会和密集的写作静修，以设定目标和计划，在两国范围内反映出来，以扩大覆盖范围和能力。这些活动将在主要代表群体的参与和参与下进行，特别是老年人，但也有潜在的行业合作伙伴，以确保未来的触觉感知方案考虑到提出的相关问题。这将与艺术家推动的社区工作坊和小组讨论相结合，参与者将反思他们不断变化的触摸体验，并为未来工作的优先事项做出贡献。这些将有助于更好和更相关地理解项目中的触摸以及由老年人指导和共同创建的进一步工作。

Touch perception is important for feeling shapes, textures and materials, for identifying dirty vs clean surfaces, for balance and it can evoke detailed memories or emotions. Being able to discriminate form and detail on surfaces is important for tasks such as discriminating coins in a purse, detecting the quality or wear of fabric, or detecting fine particles of dirt on dishes or surfaces. Receiving high quality information from the skin on fingers helps when dressing (especially for buttons or clasps), sticking stamps or labels and identifying objects or shapes. The ability to sense vibration through the fingertips is important to sense fine detail on surfaces such as wood or paper, and increasingly used to enrich the experience of touch screens. In our recent series of artist facilitated workshops with (healthy) older people it was remarked that a world without a rich experience of tactile texture is bland and dull.Touch perception declines with age. We are only beginning to understand how this happens but we know that the skin becomes drier and less elastic with age and the number and density of receptors in the skin reduces. There are also losses in the neural and cortical mechanisms for touch. Even in otherwise healthy people, there are many experiences that can reduce touch sensitivity (from conditions such as stroke, neurodegenerative conditions, scarring and callouses). What is less clear is how this impacts on the experience of touch and day to day activities. In this project we aim to bring together experts from Ireland and the UK to address how touch perception can be both measured and understood, especially with respect to ageing. There are complementary activities and specialisms in the two countries. On the one hand there are valuable longitudinal datasets and multidisciplinary, analytical teams in Ireland providing insights into the role of the ageing process on the senses and multisensory perception (e.g. The Irish Longitudinal study on Ageing (TILDA), the Technology for Independent Living (TRIL) project). On the other hand, in the UK there are teams investigating touch sensitivity behaviourally and psychophysically, combined with computational modelling. This project will bring specialists from these areas, together with interested parties from industry and critical input from those with lived experience to address research in touch.We have identified multisensory influences on touch as a particular area of focus. Simply being able to see the item being touched can enhance the ability of people to discriminate differences in a touched surface. Importantly, this is true even if the details of the surface are not perceivable. We also know that some surfaces make a characteristic sound as they are stroked or rubbed, and this too influences how they feel: a crunch or a crinkle can make a surface seem rougher or more scratchy for example. This could be valuable as we aim to enhance or improve the experience of touch for older people or those with reduced touch perception. As we age, we are more likely to automatically combine information from multiple senses, so investigating multisensory touch holds promise. In this project we plan research focused workshops together with a intensive writing retreat to set goals and plan, mirrored across both countries to increase reach and capacity. These activities will occur with engagement and involvement of key representative groups, particularly older people but also potential industry partners, to ensure that future programmes on tactile perception take account of pertinent issues raised. This will be integrated with artist facilitated community workshops and panel discussions where participants will reflect on their changing experience of touch and contribute to priority setting for future work. These will build towards a better and more relevant understanding of touch within the project and further work, directed and co-created by older people.