Spatial and temporal properties of thermal sensation

1976 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph C. Stevens
2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 1270-1281
Author(s):  
Leah Fostick ◽  
Riki Taitelbaum-Swead ◽  
Shulamith Kreitler ◽  
Shelly Zokraut ◽  
Miriam Billig

Purpose Difficulty in understanding spoken speech is a common complaint among aging adults, even when hearing impairment is absent. Correlational studies point to a relationship between age, auditory temporal processing (ATP), and speech perception but cannot demonstrate causality unlike training studies. In the current study, we test (a) the causal relationship between a spatial–temporal ATP task (temporal order judgment [TOJ]) and speech perception among aging adults using a training design and (b) whether improvement in aging adult speech perception is accompanied by improved self-efficacy. Method Eighty-two participants aged 60–83 years were randomly assigned to a group receiving (a) ATP training (TOJ) over 14 days, (b) non-ATP training (intensity discrimination) over 14 days, or (c) no training. Results The data showed that TOJ training elicited improvement in all speech perception tests, which was accompanied by increased self-efficacy. Neither improvement in speech perception nor self-efficacy was evident following non-ATP training or no training. Conclusions There was no generalization of the improvement resulting from TOJ training to intensity discrimination or generalization of improvement resulting from intensity discrimination training to speech perception. These findings imply that the effect of TOJ training on speech perception is specific and such improvement is not simply the product of generally improved auditory perception. It provides support for the idea that temporal properties of speech are indeed crucial for speech perception. Clinically, the findings suggest that aging adults can be trained to improve their speech perception, specifically through computer-based auditory training, and this may improve perceived self-efficacy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 864-872
Author(s):  
Fernanda Borowsky da Rosa ◽  
Adriane Schmidt Pasqualoto ◽  
Catriona M. Steele ◽  
Renata Mancopes

Introduction The oral cavity and pharynx have a rich sensory system composed of specialized receptors. The integrity of oropharyngeal sensation is thought to be fundamental for safe and efficient swallowing. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients are at risk for oropharyngeal sensory impairment due to frequent use of inhaled medications and comorbidities including gastroesophageal reflux disease. Objective This study aimed to describe and compare oral and oropharyngeal sensory function measured using noninstrumental clinical methods in adults with COPD and healthy controls. Method Participants included 27 adults (18 men, nine women) with a diagnosis of COPD and a mean age of 66.56 years ( SD = 8.68). The control group comprised 11 healthy adults (five men, six women) with a mean age of 60.09 years ( SD = 11.57). Spirometry measures confirmed reduced functional expiratory volumes (% predicted) in the COPD patients compared to the control participants. All participants completed a case history interview and underwent clinical evaluation of oral and oropharyngeal sensation by a speech-language pathologist. The sensory evaluation explored the detection of tactile and temperature stimuli delivered by cotton swab to six locations in the oral cavity and two in the oropharynx as well as identification of the taste of stimuli administered in 5-ml boluses to the mouth. Analyses explored the frequencies of accurate responses regarding stimulus location, temperature and taste between groups, and between age groups (“≤ 65 years” and “> 65 years”) within the COPD cohort. Results We found significantly higher frequencies of reported use of inhaled medications ( p < .001) and xerostomia ( p = .003) in the COPD cohort. Oral cavity thermal sensation ( p = .009) was reduced in the COPD participants, and a significant age-related decline in gustatory sensation was found in the COPD group ( p = .018). Conclusion This study found that most of the measures of oral and oropharyngeal sensation remained intact in the COPD group. Oral thermal sensation was impaired in individuals with COPD, and reduced gustatory sensation was observed in the older COPD participants. Possible links between these results and the use of inhaled medication by individuals with COPD are discussed.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darren Rhodes

Time is a fundamental dimension of human perception, cognition and action, as the perception and cognition of temporal information is essential for everyday activities and survival. Innumerable studies have investigated the perception of time over the last 100 years, but the neural and computational bases for the processing of time remains unknown. First, we present a brief history of research and the methods used in time perception and then discuss the psychophysical approach to time, extant models of time perception, and advancing inconsistencies between each account that this review aims to bridge the gap between. Recent work has advocated a Bayesian approach to time perception. This framework has been applied to both duration and perceived timing, where prior expectations about when a stimulus might occur in the future (prior distribution) are combined with current sensory evidence (likelihood function) in order to generate the perception of temporal properties (posterior distribution). In general, these models predict that the brain uses temporal expectations to bias perception in a way that stimuli are ‘regularized’ i.e. stimuli look more like what has been seen before. Evidence for this framework has been found using human psychophysical testing (experimental methods to quantify behaviour in the perceptual system). Finally, an outlook for how these models can advance future research in temporal perception is discussed.


1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret A. Kolka ◽  
Christina M. Kesick ◽  
Leslie Levine ◽  
Sharon A. McBride ◽  
Lou A. Stephenson

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-178
Author(s):  
Y. Oono ◽  
H. Kubo ◽  
T. Imamura ◽  
K. Matsumoto ◽  
S. Uchida ◽  
...  

AbstractAimsNovel quantitative thermal stimulator devices (QTSDs) have been developed to deliver thermal pulse stimulation with regulated constant temperatures (0–45°C) with a Peltier element probe (16 cm2). The aim of this study was to investigate subjective sensation induced by the interaction between simultaneously applied painful cold and heat stimuli in various sites.MethodsTwenty healthy subjects (12 men and 8 women, age range: 25–45 years) participated. The intensity of cold pain (CP) and heat pain (HP) stimuli were assessed by visual analogue scale (VAS) and adjusted to elicit approximately 70/100 mm. Alternately pulse stimulations (pulse duration of 40 s; 0.025 Hz) which consisted of CP, HP, or neutral temperature (32°C) were applied. Four conditions were tested and subjective sensations were assessed: (1) one QTSD was applied to non-dominant forearm and cold-heat pulse stimulation was applied.Two QTSDs were applied to (2) non-dominant ipsilateral forearm with 5 cm apart, (3) non-dominant and contralateral forearms, (4) non-dominant forearm and ipsilateral thigh, respectively. In conditions of (2)–(4), CP-neutral pulse stimulation (C-Neutral) and neutral-HP pulse stimulation (Neutral-H) were applied simultaneously with opposite phase, respectively.ResultsCP and HP were 3.9±1.0°C (mean±SD) and 43.6±0.9°C (mean±SD), respectively. The VAS values for CP and HP were 73.4±2.0 mm (mean±SD) and 76.4 ±4.8 mm (mean±SD), respectively. Some subjects could not discriminate cold or heat sensation and some felt cold as heat (paradoxical sensation). The number of subjects with such paradoxical sensation in (1), (2), (3), (4) were 9 (45%), 2 (10%), 0 (0%) and 3 (15%), respectively.ConclusionsIn healthy volunteers, simultaneous alternately cold-heat pulse stimulation on one site triggered paradoxical thermal sensation, which to a much less degree is triggered when C-Neutral and Neutral-H were applied to different dermatomes. This suggests that the mechanism is primarily triggered peripherally.


Author(s):  
Tengfei Li ◽  
Jing Liu ◽  
Haiying Sun ◽  
Xiang Chen ◽  
Lipeng Zhang ◽  
...  

AbstractIn the past few years, significant progress has been made on spatio-temporal cyber-physical systems in achieving spatio-temporal properties on several long-standing tasks. With the broader specification of spatio-temporal properties on various applications, the concerns over their spatio-temporal logics have been raised in public, especially after the widely reported safety-critical systems involving self-driving cars, intelligent transportation system, image processing. In this paper, we present a spatio-temporal specification language, STSL PC, by combining Signal Temporal Logic (STL) with a spatial logic S4 u, to characterize spatio-temporal dynamic behaviors of cyber-physical systems. This language is highly expressive: it allows the description of quantitative signals, by expressing spatio-temporal traces over real valued signals in dense time, and Boolean signals, by constraining values of spatial objects across threshold predicates. STSL PC combines the power of temporal modalities and spatial operators, and enjoys important properties such as finite model property. We provide a Hilbert-style axiomatization for the proposed STSL PC and prove the soundness and completeness by the spatio-temporal extension of maximal consistent set and canonical model. Further, we demonstrate the decidability of STSL PC and analyze the complexity of STSL PC. Besides, we generalize STSL to the evolution of spatial objects over time, called STSL OC, and provide the proof of its axiomatization system and decidability.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Julian Gutierrez ◽  
Paul Harrenstein ◽  
Giuseppe Perelli ◽  
Michael Wooldridge

We define and investigate a novel notion of expressiveness for temporal logics that is based on game theoretic equilibria of multi-agent systems. We use iterated Boolean games as our abstract model of multi-agent systems [Gutierrez et al. 2013, 2015a]. In such a game, each agent  has a goal  , represented using (a fragment of) Linear Temporal Logic ( ) . The goal  captures agent  ’s preferences, in the sense that the models of  represent system behaviours that would satisfy  . Each player controls a subset of Boolean variables , and at each round in the game, player is at liberty to choose values for variables in any way that she sees fit. Play continues for an infinite sequence of rounds, and so as players act they collectively trace out a model for , which for every player will either satisfy or fail to satisfy their goal. Players are assumed to act strategically, taking into account the goals of other players, in an attempt to bring about computations satisfying their goal. In this setting, we apply the standard game-theoretic concept of (pure) Nash equilibria. The (possibly empty) set of Nash equilibria of an iterated Boolean game can be understood as inducing a set of computations, each computation representing one way the system could evolve if players chose strategies that together constitute a Nash equilibrium. Such a set of equilibrium computations expresses a temporal property—which may or may not be expressible within a particular fragment. The new notion of expressiveness that we formally define and investigate is then as follows: What temporal properties are characterised by the Nash equilibria of games in which agent goals are expressed in specific fragments of  ? We formally define and investigate this notion of expressiveness for a range of fragments. For example, a very natural question is the following: Suppose we have an iterated Boolean game in which every goal is represented using a particular fragment of : is it then always the case that the equilibria of the game can be characterised within ? We show that this is not true in general.


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