Vividness control of KI with variations in visual stimulus patterns
Hiraku KOMURA, Shumpei Yoshida, Tomoki Shimura, Masakazu Honda, Masahiro Ohka · 2017
We develop a new rehabilitation device that combines the effects of two illusions: the kinesthetic illusion (KI) and the rubber hand illusion (RHI). We investigate whether KI can be reinforced with RHI where the former is caused by applying the oscillator's vibration to the flexor carpi radialis muscle (FCR) of a right hand. RHI is caused by showing moving images of a right hand overlapped on the subject's hand through a display pad. The illusion's vividness is induced in the right hand was represented by the left hand and measured by a rotary encoder, which can measure the joint angle of the flexion and the extension motion of the right wrist. We conducted experiments that quantitatively compared the KI strength that was reinforced by the visual stimulus with the pure KI strength, where the enhanced KI strength was about 1.4 to 1.5 times stronger than the unenhanced KI.