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Tactile Acuity Charts: A Reliable Measure of Spatial Acuity

For assessing tactile spatial resolution it has recently been recommended to use tactile acuity charts which follow the design principles of the Snellen letter charts for visual acuity and involve active touch. However, it is currently unknown whether acuity thresholds obtained with this newly devel...

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Autores principales: Bruns, Patrick, Camargo, Carlos J., Campanella, Humberto, Esteve, Jaume, Dinse, Hubert R., Röder, Brigitte
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3913609/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24504346
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0087384
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author Bruns, Patrick
Camargo, Carlos J.
Campanella, Humberto
Esteve, Jaume
Dinse, Hubert R.
Röder, Brigitte
author_facet Bruns, Patrick
Camargo, Carlos J.
Campanella, Humberto
Esteve, Jaume
Dinse, Hubert R.
Röder, Brigitte
author_sort Bruns, Patrick
collection PubMed
description For assessing tactile spatial resolution it has recently been recommended to use tactile acuity charts which follow the design principles of the Snellen letter charts for visual acuity and involve active touch. However, it is currently unknown whether acuity thresholds obtained with this newly developed psychophysical procedure are in accordance with established measures of tactile acuity that involve passive contact with fixed duration and control of contact force. Here we directly compared tactile acuity thresholds obtained with the acuity charts to traditional two-point and grating orientation thresholds in a group of young healthy adults. For this purpose, two types of charts, using either Braille-like dot patterns or embossed Landolt rings with different orientations, were adapted from previous studies. Measurements with the two types of charts were equivalent, but generally more reliable with the dot pattern chart. A comparison with the two-point and grating orientation task data showed that the test-retest reliability of the acuity chart measurements after one week was superior to that of the passive methods. Individual thresholds obtained with the acuity charts agreed reasonably with the grating orientation threshold, but less so with the two-point threshold that yielded relatively distinct acuity estimates compared to the other methods. This potentially considerable amount of mismatch between different measures of tactile acuity suggests that tactile spatial resolution is a complex entity that should ideally be measured with different methods in parallel. The simple test procedure and high reliability of the acuity charts makes them a promising complement and alternative to the traditional two-point and grating orientation thresholds.
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spelling pubmed-39136092014-02-06 Tactile Acuity Charts: A Reliable Measure of Spatial Acuity Bruns, Patrick Camargo, Carlos J. Campanella, Humberto Esteve, Jaume Dinse, Hubert R. Röder, Brigitte PLoS One Research Article For assessing tactile spatial resolution it has recently been recommended to use tactile acuity charts which follow the design principles of the Snellen letter charts for visual acuity and involve active touch. However, it is currently unknown whether acuity thresholds obtained with this newly developed psychophysical procedure are in accordance with established measures of tactile acuity that involve passive contact with fixed duration and control of contact force. Here we directly compared tactile acuity thresholds obtained with the acuity charts to traditional two-point and grating orientation thresholds in a group of young healthy adults. For this purpose, two types of charts, using either Braille-like dot patterns or embossed Landolt rings with different orientations, were adapted from previous studies. Measurements with the two types of charts were equivalent, but generally more reliable with the dot pattern chart. A comparison with the two-point and grating orientation task data showed that the test-retest reliability of the acuity chart measurements after one week was superior to that of the passive methods. Individual thresholds obtained with the acuity charts agreed reasonably with the grating orientation threshold, but less so with the two-point threshold that yielded relatively distinct acuity estimates compared to the other methods. This potentially considerable amount of mismatch between different measures of tactile acuity suggests that tactile spatial resolution is a complex entity that should ideally be measured with different methods in parallel. The simple test procedure and high reliability of the acuity charts makes them a promising complement and alternative to the traditional two-point and grating orientation thresholds. Public Library of Science 2014-02-04 /pmc/articles/PMC3913609/ /pubmed/24504346 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0087384 Text en © 2014 Bruns et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Bruns, Patrick
Camargo, Carlos J.
Campanella, Humberto
Esteve, Jaume
Dinse, Hubert R.
Röder, Brigitte
Tactile Acuity Charts: A Reliable Measure of Spatial Acuity
title Tactile Acuity Charts: A Reliable Measure of Spatial Acuity
title_full Tactile Acuity Charts: A Reliable Measure of Spatial Acuity
title_fullStr Tactile Acuity Charts: A Reliable Measure of Spatial Acuity
title_full_unstemmed Tactile Acuity Charts: A Reliable Measure of Spatial Acuity
title_short Tactile Acuity Charts: A Reliable Measure of Spatial Acuity
title_sort tactile acuity charts: a reliable measure of spatial acuity
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3913609/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24504346
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0087384
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