a quantitative method for determining spatial discriminative capacity定量方法确定空间区别的能力.pdfVIP

BioMedical Engineering OnLine BioMed Central Research Open Access A quantitative method for determining spatial discriminative capacity Zheng Zhang, Vinay Tannan, Jameson K Holden, Robert G Dennis and Mark Tommerdahl* Address: Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, NC, USA Email: Zheng Zhang - zhzh@; Vinay Tannan - tannanv@email .; Jameson K Holden - jamesonholden@; Robert G Dennis - bob@; Mark Tommerdahl* - tommerda@ * Corresponding author Published: 10 March 2008 Received: 30 November 2007 Accepted: 10 March 2008 BioMedical Engineering OnLine 2008, 7:12 doi:10.1186/1475-925X-7-12 This article is available from: /content/7/1/12 © 2008 Zhang et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: The traditional two-point discrimination (TPD) test, a widely used tactile spatial acuity measure, has been criticized as being imprecise because it is based on subjective criteria and involves a number of non- spatial cues. The results of a recent study showed that as two stimuli were delivered simultaneously, vibrotactile amplitude discrimination became worse when the two stimuli were positioned relatively close together and was significantly degraded when the probes were within a subjects two-point limen. The impairment of amplitude discrimination wi