Neurotactile Integration

Abstract: The field of neural representation of sensory integration is an advanced topic with complex processes. The mechanisms of the brain are far from fully understood and are in need of further development to be implemented in clinical usages such as neuroprosthetics. The purpose behind this project is to further the knowledge of neurotactile integration as well as processes and mechanisms of the brain by studying event related potentials (ERPs) elicited by an applied non-invasive electrotactile stimuli. This was done in collaboration with the department of Biomedical Engineering by students at the Faculty of Engineering, Lund University. Access to the university's facilities were granted, including the EEG-lab where testing was conducted. The methods used in this project are mainly laboratory experiments and MATLAB analysis of collected data. Two experiments have been performed, both with the same setup and purpose to test whether the credibility of the stated thesis. They were performed with Labview-based scripts to drive a read stimulator with an electrode generating electrical pulses. Data was recorded with a 64-channel electroencephalogram (EEG) cap connected to the Quattrocento amplifier to study electrical stimuli registered by the brain. The analysis was made with an EEG-processing code obtained by the supervisor, a signal processing code to extract better quality data of measured EEG-recordings and extract ERPs using pulse generated triggers. The most important results of this project was to be given by the ERPs representations of sensory feedback perception. These did unfortunately not yield significant results and further work needs to be done for the progress of this project.