Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 4.55.
The concept for generating artificial somatic sensations by the electrical
stimulation of afferent sensory nerve fibers
are given simultaneously to multiple sensory nerve fibers which separately
innervate different single mechanoreceptor units. Finally, we will describe
the prototype of the artificial arm system mentioned at the beginning of this
section.
The Concept and Method for Generating Somatic Sensations by
Intraneural Microelectrical Stimulation.
The concept for generating
somatic sensations is shown in Fig. 4.55.
When we touch something with our hands and a somato-sensory receptor
(mechanoreceptor) is activated by a stimulus such as pressure, heat, or vi-
bration, or by nociceptive stimuli, the nerve signals (which consist of a series
of pulses of evoked potential) generated at each mechanoreceptor are trans-
ferred to the somato-sensory area of the cerebral cortex through a peripheral
nerve and the spinal cord, which evoke the corresponding somatic sensation
to the subject.
The underlying idea is that if each single peripheral nerve fiber could
be supplied with appropriate electrical stimulation, and if we could thereby
generate the same afferent signal (the same series of evoked potential pulses)
