A rotating drum stimulator for scanning embossed patterns and textures across the skin.
A tactile stimulator is described that moves embossed or textured patterns tangentially across the skin. Patterns constructed by standard photoetching are mounted on the outer surface of a cylinder that rotates at a selected speed and is held in contact with the skin at a selected force. The stimulator operates in several modes to meet the different requirements of psychophysical and neurophysiological experiments. The features of note are (i) relatively small size and weight; (ii) flexible automated control of drum contact with the skin, angular velocity, axial position, and contact force; (iii) monitoring of drum angular and axial location to better than 10 micron accuracy; (iv) construction with commercially available devices; (v) electronic monitoring of skin contact; and (vi) rapid drum changes (2 seconds) during psychophysical or neurophysiological experiments.
Johnson
K O
KO
Department of Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205.
Phillips
J R
JR
D004582:Electronics, Medical / Q000295:instrumentation*; D004867:Equipment Design; D006801:Humans; D009482:Neurophysiology / Q000295:instrumentation; D010812:Physical Stimulation / Q000295:instrumentation*; D011603:Psychophysiology / Q000295:instrumentation; D012879:Skin Physiological Phenomena; D014110:Touch / Q000502:physiology*