Investigation of Desensitization in Upper Limb via Electrotactile Stimulation

The importance of sensory feedback in prosthetic devices cannot be overstated for amputees, enabling them to comfortably engage in daily activities. Presently, many amputees rely on visual cues to control their limb movements and interactions, which can be mentally demanding and result in inefficient use of their prostheses. This reliance contributes to device abandonment and a lack of integration with prosthetic devices. This thesis aims to examine the effects of desensitization via electrotactile stimulation on upper arm prosthetics. The objective is to develop an experimental procedure for evaluating the impact of pulse width frequency on detection thresholds for unadapted, adapted, and electrode array-based conventional electrodes. The results show significant differences between unadapted and adapted detection thresholds across various frequencies, suggesting the influence of conditioning. However, electrode array detection thresholds do not exhibit significant differences compared to unadapted thresholds, indicating a potential challenge in using electrode arrays for electrotactile feedback. At 200μs of pulse width statistical significance was achieved for 1Hz,5Hz, and 10Hz with a p-vale threshold of 0.01, whereas no statistical significance was achieved at 100μs of pulse width.