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Abstract:
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments on
tactile perception are difficult to perform because the special
characteristics of an MRI environment restrict the experimental
setup. Although recently developed actuators have made it
possible to apply vibrotactile stimuli to the skin during an fMRI
experiment, the projection of spatially extended patterns is still
precluded. In order to examine the processing of tactile perception,
a new pneumatically-driven tactile device (PTD) has
been built. This device is capable of stimulating the skin, using
arbitrary time sequences that consist of 2D tactile images up to
64 pixels. It is shown how the device is implemented in a 2 T
fMRI environment, and show that it operates without generating
artifacts. Dedicated software allows the generation of complex
paradigms and provides a user-friendly interface to other brain
mapping systems, as well as automated operation. This paper
describes the PTD elucidates its features, and demonstrate its
reliability by reporting results from an fMRI study based on an
event-related protocol involving six subjects.
