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Objective. Evoked tactile sensation (ETS) elicited by transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) is promising to convey digit-specific sensory information to amputees naturally and non-invasively. Fitting ETS-based sensory feedback to amputees entails customizing coding of multiple sensory information for each stimulation site. This study was to elucidate the consistency of percepts and qualities by TENS at multiple stimulation sites in amputees retaining ETS. Approach. Five transradial amputees with ETS and fourteen able-bodied subjects participated in this study. Surface electrodes with small size (10 mm in diameter) were adopted to fit the restricted projected finger map on the forearm stump of amputees. Effects of stimulus frequency on sensory types were assessed, and the map of perceptual threshold for each sensation was characterized. Sensitivity for vibration and buzz sensations was measured using distinguishable difference in stimulus pulse width. Rapid assessments for modulation ranges of pulse width at fixed amplitude and frequency were developed for coding sensory information. Buzz sensation was demonstrated for location discrimination relating to prosthetic fingers. Main results. Vibration and buzz sensations were consistently evoked at 20 Hz and 50 Hz as dominant sensation types in all amputees and able-bodied subjects. Perceptual thresholds of different sensations followed a similar strength-duration curve relating stimulus amplitude to pulse width. The averaged distinguishable difference in pulse width was 12.84 ± 7.23 μs for vibration and 15.21 ± 6.47 μs for buzz in able-bodied subjects, and 14.91 ± 10.54 μs for vibration and 11.30 ± 3.42 μs for buzz in amputees. Buzz coding strategy enabled five amputees to discriminate contact of individual fingers with an overall accuracy of 77.85%. Significance. The consistency in perceptual qualities of dominant sensations can be exploited for coding multi-modality sensory feedback. A fast protocol of sensory coding is possible for fitting ETS-based, non-invasive sensory feedback to amputees.

In this letter, we discuss the extension of Feynman's derivation of the equation of motion to the case of spinning particles. We show that a spinning particle interacts only with the electromagnetic and gravitational fields. In the absence of the electromagnetic interactions, we rederive Papapetrou's equations for spinning particles in the background of the conformal gravity. We also find that the effect of spin coupled to non-constant electromagnetic fields leads to further corrections to the Lorentz force equations. Some discussions of these results are given at the end., 16pages, RU93-10-B

We study QCD radiative corrections to the nucleon's transverse spin-dependent structure function {ital g}{sub 2}({ital x},{ital Q}{sup 2}) in the leading-logarithmic order for large {ital Q}{sup 2}. The anomalous-dimension matrix for the nonsinglet twist-3 operators appearing in the operator-product expansion for {ital g}{sub 2}({ital x},{ital Q}{sup 2}) is calculated and the experimental implications are discussed.