Evaluation for sensory impairment is a routine part of autism diagnosis. Sensory impairment of hearing, vision, or touch results in developmental delay and must be addressed before delay can resolve. Recent studies confirm that tactile impairment is present in autism and can be effectively treated with a tactile stimulation protocol. The research suggests a change in management at the time of a...

INTRODUCTION Clinical symptoms of rheumatic diseases can cause changes in the level of skin tactile sensitivity. AIM To determine the tactile threshold of the hands in female patients with rheumatic diseases. It also attempted to determine correlations between rheumatic patients' tactile sensitivity and the degree of articular movement limitations, the Barthel Index (BI) and Edinburgh Handedn...

We created 59 tactile melodies by transforming pieces of music from the auditory domain to the vibrotactile domain. Sixteen observers judged these tactile melodies on a set of 16 characteristics such as ‘melodious’, ‘bombastic’, and ‘alarming’. By using advanced multivariate statistical methods, we distilled two main underlying dimensions of the tactile melodies. We interpreted these dimensions...

Objective: Isolated visual hallucinations is considered as the Charles Bonnet syndrome. Ophtalmic or brain organic disease is a necessary or exclusionary criterion for diagnosis. In previous reports, it reported only solitary hallucination. In this report, we found multiple hallucinations. Case Presentation: In this article we report a 64 year-old blind man with renal failure under hemodialy...

Chinese and Chumash traditional medical approaches are similar in terms of disease causation, use of acupuncture or healing touch, plants, spiritual and philosophical approaches. This article provides a brief comparison and discussion of Chinese and Chumash traditional medical practices. A table of 66 plants is presented along with Chinese and Chumash uses of each plant. These uses are compared...

The syndrome of tactile defensiveness, first described by Ayres in 1964, has undergone continued study as well as related theory development. No standardized assessment for tactile defensiveness, however, currently exists. This paper presents a 26-item screening scale, the Touch Inventory for Elementary-School-Aged Children (TIE), as well as its psychometric characteristics. Normative data and ...

In the present paper, we will attempt to gain hints regarding the nature of tactile awareness in humans. At first, we will review some recent literature showing that an actual tactile experience can emerge in absence of any tactile stimulus (e.g., tactile hallucinations, tactile illusions). According to the current model of tactile awareness, we will subsequently argue that such (false) tactile...

Tactile memory is the crucial factor in coding and transfer of the semantic information through a single vibrator. While some simulators can produce strong vibro-tactile sensations, discrimination of several tactile patterns can remain quite poor. Currently used actuators, such as shaking motor, have also technological and methodological restrictions. We designed a vibro-tactile pen and softwar...

PURPOSE Tactile deficits have been understudied in children with unilateral cerebral palsy (UCP) using a limited range of tactile assessments. This study aims to characterize performance across a comprehensive battery of tactile registration and perception assessments in children with UCP and typically developing children (TDC). METHODS Fifty-two children with UCP (Gross Motor Function Classi...

Tactile feedback from a remotely controlled robotic arm can facilitate certain tasks by enabling the user to experience tactile or force sensations from the robot's interaction with the environment. However, equipping both the robot and the user with tactile sensing and feedback systems can be complex, expensive, restrictive and application specific. This paper introduces a new tele-operation h...