Development and validation of a tactile sensitivity scale for peripheral neuropathy screening

Study of Patients Self-Training Influence on Peripheral Neuropathies Diseases Diagnosis through D.I.T.A Device

In our daily life, the sight and the sense of touch play a fundamental role in objects recognitions. This process is helped by the experience: if a subject has already seen or already touched an object in the past, he will recognize it more easily in the future. Following this assumption, the authors of this paper wanted to investigate if the experience can influence the results of a clinical examination where the subject has an active role. The attention was focused on the peripheral neuropathies diagnosis since they require an accurate assessment of several parameters including the tactile sensitivity trend. In other words, if the tests encompass an active role of the subjects, one of the main uncertainties is the self-training that influences the subject responses. This work focuses on the study of this self-training using the D.I.T.A device (Dynamic Investigation Test-rig on hAptics). Results clearly show a fundamental role of priming during "haptic modality": expert subjects, previously experienced with the tests, demonstrated better recognition of the encountered stimuli, compared to novices. Moreover, the results show that the maximum difference between the two groups of subjects is in the first part of the test. An ANOVA analysis was carried out to demonstrate that also the errors between the pins-arrays are affected by the priming.