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PubMedDate not supplied

Results of a patient education project using a touch-screen computer.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this project was to increase use of the Physician Data Query and Patient Information File services of the National Cancer Institute in a clinical setting. OVERVIEW: A patient education demonstration project was conducted at the University of Rochester Cancer Center using a touch-screen computer program called CancerHelp. Two computers were purchased, one stationed in the Patient Library at the University of Rochester Cancer Center and one circulated to three affiliated hospitals. Demographic information was asked at the beginning of the program and an evaluation was elicited at the end of the program. All information was given voluntarily; users of the system could bypass the questions if they wished. The computer program was very well received by patients and their families. The program was used 1758 times over 6 months. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: A touch-screen computer program can be an effective method for distributing cancer information.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

DNA ploidy by image cytometry in urothelial carcinomas. Comparison of touch imprints and paraffin-embedded biopsies from 31 patients.

OBJECTIVE: To compare DNA content measured by image cytometry from touch imprints and formalinfixed, paraffin-embedded samples in bladder carcinomas. STUDY DESIGN: Thirty-one biopsies of urothelial carcinomas were selected for a prospective study. Imprints of fresh specimens were performed. Cell suspensions were obtained from dewaxed samples by the procedure of Hedley. Sections 7 microns thick were used for carcinoma in situ and small biopsies. The DNA ploidy index was measured on Feulgen-stained slides using an image cytometer. RESULTS: From imprint analysis, seven grade 1 carcinomas (n = 9) were found to be diploid (78%). Nine grade 2 carcinomas (n = 12) exhibited aneuploidy (75%), as did all grade 3 and in situ carcinomas (n = 10). Multiploidy was demonstrated from imprints in four cases instead of the two detected from dewaxed tissue. In 27 cases (87%), G0/G1 peaks obtained from paraffin blocks showed a shift to the left. In five cases (16%), variations in the DNA index were responsible for discrepancies in the DNA ploidy evaluation between fresh imprints and dewaxed samples of the same tumors. CONCLUSION: Image cytometry on Feulgen-stained imprints of bladder biopsies is a simple and reliable procedure for assessing DNA ploidy in urothelial carcinomas, providing great sensitivity for detecting small aneuploid peaks and multiploid tumors. DNA image analysis of touch preparations is especially useful for carcinoma in situ and small biopsies unsuitable for Hedley's technique.

Aged↗
PubMed1998

A close look at therapeutic touch.

CONTEXT: Therapeutic Touch (TT) is a widely used nursing practice rooted in mysticism but alleged to have a scientific basis. Practitioners of TT claim to treat many medical conditions by using their hands to manipulate a "human energy field" perceptible above the patient's skin. OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether TT practitioners can actually perceive a "human energy field." DESIGN: Twenty-one practitioners with TT experience for from 1 to 27 years were tested under blinded conditions to determine whether they could correctly identify which of their hands was closest to the investigator's hand. Placement of the investigator's hand was determined by flipping a coin. Fourteen practitioners were tested 10 times each, and 7 practitioners were tested 20 times each. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Practitioners of TT were asked to state whether the investigator's unseen hand hovered above their right hand or their left hand. To show the validity of TT theory, the practitioners should have been able to locate the investigator's hand 100% of the time. A score of 50% would be expected through chance alone. RESULTS: Practitioners of TT identified the correct hand in only 123 (44%) of 280 trials, which is close to what would be expected for random chance. There was no significant correlation between the practitioner's score and length of experience (r=0.23). The statistical power of this experiment was sufficient to conclude that if TT practitioners could reliably detect a human energy field, the study would have demonstrated this. CONCLUSIONS: Twenty-one experienced TT practitioners were unable to detect the investigator's "energy field." Their failure to substantiate TT's most fundamental claim is unrefuted evidence that the claims of TT are groundless and that further professional use is unjustified.

Humans↗
PubMed1995

Touch deprivation has an adverse effect on body image: some preliminary observations.

Body image in childhood initially develops in response to the empathic reflections of the mother or caregiver that are communicated mainly by physical sensations such as touching, secure holding, or tactile nurturing. In a nonclinical sample of 173 shoppers, we observed an inverse correlation between perceived tactile nurturing during childhood and Drive for Thinness (Eating Disorder Inventory [EDI]; Pearson r = -.19, p < or = .05) and Body Dissatisfaction (EDI; Pearson r = -.23, p < or = .05) among the females (n = 102). Furthermore, among the females there was a direct correlation (r = .29, p < .05) between a current desire to get more tactile nurturance and Drive for Thinness. Our empirical finding are consistent with the earlier developmental literature and support the importance of tactile nurturance in the development of body image especially among females.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Therapeutic touch for healing acute wounds.

BACKGROUND: Therapeutic Touch (TT) as a treatment modality has increased in popularity over the past two decades. Its efficacy in relation to the healing of wounds has been expounded in anecdotal publications. To date however there has been no systematic review. OBJECTIVES: To identify and review all relevant data to determine the effectiveness of TT in the promotion of wound healing. SEARCH STRATEGY: The Cochrane Wounds Group Specialised Trials Register and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials were searched in May 2003. The Cochrane Complementary Medicine field database was searched in September 2002. In addition the Sigma Theta Tau International Registry of Nursing Research (1983 to 2002) was also searched in September 2002. Furthermore searches of MEDLINE (1966 to 2003) were conducted in 1997 and May 2003, CINAHL (1982 to 2002) in September 2002 and dissertation abstracts in September 2002. SELECTION CRITERIA: All randomised or quasi-randomised controlled trials, which compared the effect of TT with a placebo, another treatment, or no treatment control were considered. Studies which used TT as a stand-alone treatment, or as an adjunct to other therapies, were eligible. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: One reviewer (DO) determined the eligibility for inclusion of all trials. Both reviewers conducted data extraction and evaluation of each trial's quality independently. Each trial was analysed based on predetermined criteria and a narrative of each trial's main conclusions was produced. MAIN RESULTS: Four trials in people with experimental wounds were eligible for inclusion. The effect of TT on wound healing in these studies was variable. Two of the studies (n = 44 & 24) demonstrated a significant effect of TT. However the results of the two other trials favoured the control group (n = 15 & 38), one of these trials demonstrated a significant effect in favour of the control group. REVIEWER'S CONCLUSIONS: There is insufficient evidence that TT promotes healing of acute wounds.

Biopsy↗
PubMed1999

Trick maneuvers in cervical dystonia: investigation of movement- and touch-related changes in polymyographic activity.

Antagonistic gestures or trick maneuvers are well-known clinical features to reduce or abolish dystonic posturing in cervical dystonia (CD). The maneuvers typically consist of a finger touch to the facial skin but their physiology remains unknown. To determine the temporal profile of geste maneuver performance, 25 patients with idiopathic CD were studied by means of polymyography of six cervical muscles prior to any botulinum toxin treatment. Two piezoelectric elements fixed to a fingertip of the hand involved in the trick maneuver and to the facial target region, respectively, were used to relate the essential points of the trick maneuver time course (start of geste-arm movement, facial contact, end of contact, end of movement) to changes in polymyographic activity. Thirteen patients (52%) showed marked reductions of electromyographic (EMG) activity (> or =50% in at least one muscle) during arm movement, definitely prior to contact between fingers and facial target area; in the remaining 12 patients (48%), geste-related EMG effects were confined to facial-finger contact. These results might indicate different physiological mechanisms in clinically indistinguishable antagonistic gestures.

Adult↗
PubMed1978

Introduction of automated systems to evaluate touch-pressure, vibration, and thermal cutaneous sensation in man.

Systems for automatic assessment of cutaneous touch-pressure, vibratory, and thermal sensation have been developed. These systems use stimuli which are quantified and reproducible, a two-alternative forced-choice technique, and programmed steps to test, score, and report. If normal responses from series of healthy persons have been measured, percentile values specific for test, site, age, and sex can be determined. Abnormality, as in neurological disease, can then be defined as the response which has a value greater than that of the 95th (or other) percentile. These systems may be used to detect and validate abnormalities of sensation in neurological disease and in persons at risk from new medications or from industrial toxins, and to monitor worsening or improvement of sensation in follow-up of a patient or in evaluation of therapeutic regimens.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Functional MRI in human somatosensory cortex activated by touching textured surfaces.

MRI revealed activation foci in human somatosensory cortex during protocols involving stimulation of the fingertips with a textured surface. A 2D T2*-weighted gradient echo sequence was used to acquire images. The imaging protocol included acquiring images while subjects performed specific tactile stimulation paradigms (activation scans) or rested. Three different paradigms were used to produce functional activation using a textured surface to rub the fingertips of one hand. First, motor sensory activation was produced by rubbing the textured surface held in one hand against the fingertips of the opposite hand only during the activation scans. Second, the hand holding the textured surface moved throughout the experiment but touched the fingertips of the opposite hand only during the activation scans. Third, subjects remained still in the magnet throughout the entire study while an investigator rubbed the textured surface against the subjects' fingertips during the activation scans. Images were postprocessed using a cross-correlation scheme. The results revealed multiple foci of motor sensory activation near the central sulcus, postcentral sulcus, and prefrontal cortex.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Stability of tactile defensiveness across cultures: European and American children's responses to the Touch Inventory for Elementary school aged children.

Screening and assessment for single and discrete sensory systems, such as screening for tactile defensiveness, can provide valid information for identifying sensory processing dysfunction of children. Tactile defensiveness may be considered to be a specialized type of what was previously called a sensory integrative disorder and now is termed a sensory modulation disorder. The current study was designed to examine further the phenomenon of tactile defensiveness, particularly the stability of the concept, across different cultures. In this study, the test scores of 28 European children (16 girls and 12 boys of three different nationalities) on the Touch Inventory for Elementary School Aged Children (TIE) were collected and analysed (Royeen and Fortune, 1990). The TIE scores of the European sample were compared with that of the American sample in the original TIE study (Royeen and Fortune, 1990). Results revealed that the mean test scores on the TIE between the American sample and European sample were very similar (n = 415, M = 41.0 vs. n = 28, M = 39.5) and no significant difference was found between the two samples (t = 0.99, p < 0.05). Internal consistency of the TIE on the European sample was found to be good and close to that obtained from the American sample (0.78 vs. 0.89). The current study provides evidence that tactile defensiveness is a stable phenomenon across different cultures as measured by the TIE. Limitations of the study include use of a small and convenient sample of European children. Further studies are recommended to examine tactile defensiveness as a clinical phenomenon.

Child↗
PubMed1985

Vertical neuronal arrays in the postcentral gyrus signaling active touch: a receptive field study in the conscious monkey.

Single neuronal activity was recorded in the crown of the postcentral gyrus (areas 1 and 2) in 5 conscious monkeys. A total of 88 penetrations entered perpendicularly to the cortical surface. Among them, 6 examples are chosen and the receptive field characteristics of constituent neurons were described in some detail. Receptive fields of neurons recorded along a particular penetration were variable in their positions, but the largest receptive field usually covered the others. Neurons with the largest receptive fields were found most frequently in the infragranular layers. Often they included inhibitory receptive fields. The inhibitory receptive fields were arranged side-by-side to the excitatory ones, rather than in a center-surround fashion. The key stimulus common to neurons in a vertical penetration was the contact of an object to the receptive field achieved during animal's active behavior to manipulate the object. We thus designated the largest receptive field as a functional surface. Our results demonstrate that a vertical array of neurons in this cortical region can be regarded as a functional assemblage which deals with a set of information concerning one of various aspects of active touch.

Animals↗
PubMed1979

Glycosaminoglycans in the touch corpuscle of the dog.

Alcian Blue staining of the touch corpuscle of dog skin indicates that glycosaminoglycans are present as globular masses in some of the basal cells and are also seen in high concentration in the connective tissue core. The function of these basal cells is not clear but they may be responsible for the production of the large amount of glycosaminoglycan present in the underlying dermis.

Alcian Blue↗
PubMed1996

A retrotransposon-like sequence linked to the S-locus of Nicotiana alata is expressed in styles in response to touch.

We have identified a family of repetitive sequences in the genome of Nicotiana alata named Tna1 (Transposon of N. alata). The first element we characterised was a genomic clone for the N. alata s6-ribonuclease (S6-RNase), a gene required for self-incompatibility in this species. The DNA sequence of this element resembles the integrase domain of retrotransposons of the gypsy class and is most similar to a retrotransposon from Lilium henryi. A transcript present in N.alata styles (self-incompatibility genotype S6S6) hybridized to Tna1 and accumulated in the style following either pollination or touching. This transcript was cloned from a cDNA library and was encoded by second, partial Tna1 elements. Neither the transcribed sequence nor the original Tna1 element contain an open reading frame or is likely to be able to transpose. The second element was mapped using a population of N.alata plants segregating for alleles of the self-incompatibility locus and is closely linked to the S6-allele. The Tna1 element is present in a number of Nicotiana species and appears to have been active at least twice during the evolution of this genus.

Amino Acid Sequence↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Alexithymia and hypersensitivity to touch and palpation.

Alexithymia appears to be directly related to the process of somatization of psychological distress that has not found verbal expression. The lack of a meaningful dialogue between mother and child in early infancy may predispose the development of an alexithymic strategy in expressing psychic and psychosocial stress. This can occur in the form of unpleasant bodily sensations or pain. The human skin is, in addition to the oral and gastrointestinal organs, the earliest contact sphere between the young infant and the environment. In a group of 312 randomly chosen patients at an outpatient primary health care clinic a significant relationship was found between palpational hypersensitivity to touch on the one hand and somatization proneness and the degree of alexithymia on the other hand.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Attitudes to vaginal/urethral touching and device placement in women with urinary incontinence.

Because of recent development of a number of intravaginal and urethral occlusive devices for the treatment of urinary incontinence, we aimed to develop a linear analog scale that measured women's attitudes to becoming familiar with their genital anatomy and to placing devices into or upon the vagina or urethral orifices. We also investigated whether such attitudes were affected by previous tampon or diaphragm use, or were age dependent. After pilot studies, a 10-item questionnaire was given to 104 consecutive incontinent women, only 30% of whom were quite comfortable about the concept of touching their genitalia: this attitude was age dependent. Only 21% were quite willing to insert a continence device into their vagina: this attitude varied weakly with age but was significantly affected by previous tampon or diaphragm usage. Only 15% felt very comfortable about placing a continence device on to their urethra, but the likelihood of a positive response to this concept was not at all affected by age and was only slightly more common in previous tampon users. Thus older women are less likely to understand the anatomy of their genitalia or to be comfortable about the idea of exploring it, but age is no barrier to willingness to employ urethral or vaginal continence devices per se. We suggest that such a linear analog questionnaire may help gynecologists determine which patients might respond well to the use of vaginal or urethral continence devices.

Adult↗
PubMed2007

Optimal integration of shape information from vision and touch.

Many tasks can be carried out by using several sources of information. For example, an object's size and shape can be judged based on visual as well as haptic cues. It has been shown recently that human observers integrate visual and haptic size information in a statistically optimal fashion, in the sense that the integrated estimate is most reliable (Ernst and Banks in Nature 415:429-433, 2002). In the present study, we tested whether this holds also for visual and haptic shape information. In previous studies virtual stimuli were used to test for optimality in integration. Virtual displays may, however, contain additional inappropriate cues that provide conflicting information and thus affect cue integration. Therefore, we studied optimal integration using real objects. Furthermore, we presented visual information via mirrors to create a spatial separation between visual and haptic cues while observers saw their hand touching the object and thus, knew that they were seeing and feeling the same object. Does this knowledge promote integration even though signals are spatially discrepant which has been shown to lead to a breakdown of integration (Gepshtein et al. in J Vis 5:1013-1023, 2005)? Consistent with the model predictions, observers weighted visual and haptic cues to shape according to their reliability: progressively more weight was given to haptics when visual information became less reliable. Moreover, the integrated visual-haptic estimate was more reliable than either unimodal estimate. These findings suggest that observers integrate visual and haptic shape information of real 3D objects. Thereby, knowledge that multisensory signals arise from the same object seems to promote integration.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

Relative effects of the spatial and temporal characteristics of scanned surfaces on human perception of tactile roughness using passive touch.

The present experiments were designed to determine the ability of humans to estimate the roughness of raised dot surfaces using passive touch (subject immobile, surfaces scanned proximo-distally under the tip of the middle digit). In two initial experiments, the spatial period in the direction of the scan (longitudinal SP) was varied from 1.5 to 5 mm, while the transverse SP was kept constant at 2 mm. These surfaces were identical to those used in single unit recording experiments in primates which have shown that neurones in primary somatosensory cortex (SI) show graded changes in discharge over the same range of SPs. In the third and fourth experiments, roughness perception was studied over an extended range of longitudinal SPs (1.5-8.5 mm); transverse SP was either 1 or 2 mm. We also examined the effects on roughness perception of presenting the surfaces at two different scanning speeds (approximately 50 and approximately 95 mm/s), similar to those employed in the unit recordings. Magnitude estimates of perceived roughness increased in a nearly linear fashion as longitudinal SP was increased up to either 5 mm (experiments 1 and 2) or 8.5 mm (experiments 3 and 4). A modest increase in the transverse SP elicited a small increase in roughness estimates, with preservation of the linear relation between roughness and longitudinal SP. The roughness sensation evoked by each surface was not affected by the change of the temporal pattern of scanning (Low and High speeds). These results showed that there is perceptual constancy for roughness across a twofold change in passive scanning speed, and that roughness is a function of the spatial characteristics of these raised dot surfaces. While a spatial code may underlie this observation, it is suggested that a simpler intensive code may be sufficient to explain the psychophysical observations. Based on the results of neurophysiological recordings in SI cortex, it is suggested that an invariant central representation of surface roughness could be extracted from the ambiguous peripheral signals that covary with roughness and the stimulating conditions (e.g. speed) by means of a simple subtraction process.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

Stabilization of posture by precision touch of the index finger with rigid and flexible filaments.

Light touch of the index finger with a stationary surface at non-mechanically supportive force levels (<100 g) greatly attenuates the body sway of standing subjects. In three experiments, we evaluated the properties of finger contact and of the contacted object necessary to produce postural stabilization in subjects standing heel-to-toe with eyes closed, as well as how accurately hand position can be controlled. Experiment 1 involved finger contact with flexible filaments of different bending strengths, a flat surface, and an imagined spatial position. Contact with the flat surface was most effective in attenuating sway; the flexible filaments were much less effective but still significantly better than imagined contact. Experiment 2 compared the effectiveness of finger contact with a flexible filament, a rigid filament of the same diameter, a flat surface, and an imagined spatial position. The rigid filament and flat surface conditions were equally effective in attenuating body sway and were greatly superior to contact with the flexible filament, which was superior to imagined contact. Experiment 3 included five conditions: arms by sides; finger "contact" with an imagined spatial position; finger contact with a flat surface; finger contact with a flexible filament attempting to maintain it bent; and contact with the flexible filament attempting not to bend it. The arms by sides and finger "contact" with an imagined position conditions did not differ significantly; all three conditions involving actual finger contact showed significantly less center of pressure and hand sway, but contact with the flat surface was most effective in attenuating both postural and hand displacement. In all three experiments, the level of force applied in fingertip contact conditions was far below that necessary to provide mechanical stabilization. Our findings indicate that: (1) stimulation of a small number of receptors in the fingertip is adequate to allow stabilization of sway, (2) fingertip force levels as low as 5-10 g provide some stabilization, (3) contact with a stationary spatial referent is most effective, and (4) independent control of arm and torso occurs when finger contact is allowed.

Adult↗