Towards determining the afferent sites of perception feedback on residual arms of amputees with transcutaneous electrical stimulation

The coordination and combination of motion and sensation are critical to realize a natural and precise control of prosthetic hands. Transcutaneous electrical stimulation (TES) is one of possible methods to develop an intuitive perception feedback for limb amputees. However, the perception afferent sites would be a critical issue that is still unexplored in depth. This paper reports a preliminary study on using somatosensory evoked potentials (SEP) to determine the proper afferent sites of perceptions on residual arms of transradial amputees. In this study, two transradial amputees with phantom finger perception (PFP) were recruited and SEP for the stimulation of median nerves and ulnar nerves were recorded and analyzed. PFP distribution maps on subjects´ stumps were obtained by mechanical stimulations performed manually. Electrical stimulation was then applied to some selected sites on the stumps of their residual arms with surface electrodes to evoke SEP. In the experiments, SEP were successfully recorded, which means that the proposed method might be a suitable approach for localizing the afferent sites of perceptions, and could provide technique support for possible intuitive neural feedback for limb amputees in future work.