Analysis of Somatosensory Cortical Responses to Different Electrotactile Stimulations as a Method Towards an Objective Definition of Artificial Sensory Feedback Stimuli : An MEG Pilot Study

Sensory feedback is a critical component in many human-machine interfaces (e.g., bionic limbs) to provide missing sensations. Specifically, electrotactile stimulation is a popular feedback modality able to evoke configurable sensations by modulating pulse amplitude, duration, and frequency of the applied stimuli. However, these sensations coded by electrotactile parameters are thus far predominantly determined by subjective user reports, which leads to heterogeneous and unstable feedback delivery. Thus, a more objective understanding of the impact that different stimulation parameters induce in the brain, is needed. Analysis of cortical responses to electrotactile afference might be an effective method in this regard. In this study, we used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate the somatosensory evoked fields (SEFs) and equivalent current dipoles (ECDs) locations in nine non-invasive electrotactile stimulation conditions (1.2T, 1.5T, 1.8T) × (1 ms, 10 ms, 100 ms) with fixed 1s interval. T is the subject specific sensory threshold of the left index finger. In all conditions, we observed SEFs peaking at ~ 60 ms in the contralateral primary somatosensory cortex. While the amplitudes of the SEFs around 60 ms followed the increase in the stimulation pulse amplitude, the cortical activations were strongest when the stimulus pulse duration was set to 10 ms. These initial results indicate that the somatosensory cortical activations can provide information on the electrotactile parameters of pulse amplitude and duration, and the prosed methodology might be used for an objective interpretation of different artificial sensory feedback arrangements. Clinical Relevance―Analysis of cortical spatiotemporal representations to electrotactile stimulation can potentially be used for tailoring optimal sensory feedback delivery in patients with sensorimotor impairments.