This study investigated the effects of observing pain in others upon vicarious somatosensory experiences and the detection of somatosensory stimuli in both fibromyalgia (FM) patients and controls. The putative modulatory role of dispositional empathy, hypervigilance to pain, and central sensitization was examined. FM patients (n = 39) and controls (n = 38) saw videos depicting pain-related (han...

An Asian spice, Szechuan pepper (sanshool), is well known for the tingling sensation it induces on the mouth and on the lips. Electrophysiological studies have revealed that its active ingredient can induce firing of mechanoreceptor fibres that typically respond to mechanical vibration. Moreover, a human behavioral study has reported that the perceived frequency of sanshool-induced tingling mat...

One of the crucial actions to be performed during a grasping task is to avoid slippage. The human hand can rapidly correct applied forces and prevent a grasped object from falling, thanks to its advanced tactile sensing. The same capability is hard to reproduce in artificial systems, such as robotic or prosthetic hands, where sensory motor coordination for force and slippage control is very lim...

A real-time tactile image processing algorithm for edge contact is presented in this paper. Based on basic elasticity results, closed-form solutions for calculating contact force and local contact geometries (i.e., location and orientation of the line of contact) from the rst three moments of a tactile image are derived. Computational complexity of the proposed algorithm and those of the previo...

In conventional minimally invasive robotic surgery (MIRS) the physician is no longer in direct mechanical contact with the patient and the surgical instruments. The establishment of kinesthetic impressions shows promising results technically but tactile feedback is still a problem. Various attempts with full remote perception of tactile impressions did not prevail for a number of reasons. Above...

Achieving perceptual gains in healthy individuals or facilitating rehabilitation in patients is generally considered to require intense training to engage neuronal plasticity mechanisms. Recent work, however, suggested that beneficial outcome similar to training can be effectively acquired by a complementary approach in which the learning occurs in response to mere exposure to repetitive sensor...

We compared whisking movement patterns during acquisition of tactile detection and object discrimination under conditions in which (a) head movements are excluded and (b) exposure to tactile discriminanda is confined to the large, moveable vibrissae (macrovibrissae). We used optoelectronic instrumentation to track the movements of an individual whisker with high spatio-temporal resolution and a...

Graphene (G) and graphene oxide (GO) are 2D materials known to possess superior functionalities. This arises from their versatility to tune their electronic, electrochemical, optical, mechanical and thermal properties. However, G and GO can also be easily functionalized with various biomolecules and this has led to numerous graphenerelated biomedical sensing applications. Here we will demonstra...

Introduction: It was to compare the efficacy of semiannually fluoride varnish application versus pit and fissure sealant to reduce occlusal caries incidence. Materials and methods: A randomized parallel designed study was conducted with 352 child-ren aged 6-7 years. Participants were allocated into biannual application of varnish (n=179) (NaF 5 %( Durafluor, DENTSPLY®, Latin America) or re...

Haptic perception involves both cutaneous perception, through mechanoreceptors lying on the skin, and kinaesthetic perception mediated by the position of the fingers. Analogously, artificial devices should replicate both these perceptual channels, as well. While kinesthetic information is satisfactorily replicated by current technology, cutaneous information is still a challenging task to be pr...