Robot-assisted assessment of wrist proprioception: does wrist proprioceptive acuity follow Weber's law?

ABSTRACT

Proprioception is essential for planning and controlling limb posture and movement. In our recent work, we introduced a standardized robot-aided method for measuring proprioceptive discrimination thresholds at the wrist to obtain reliable and accurate measures of proprioceptive acuity. Weber's law defines discrimination thresholds as a constant ratio between the just noticeable difference and the reference or standard stimulus. Reporting Weber's fractions thus provides the possibility of comparing results with the reports of others collected worldwide. This work aims to determine that Weber's Law holds for proprioceptive discrimination thresholds and to provide Weber's fraction for wrist joint proprioception. To this end, eight healthy subjects experienced two passive wrist movements of different amplitude and verbally indicated which was larger. An adaptive psychophysical procedure established the amplitude of the largest stimulus according to participants' responses. This comparison stimulus was then compared to a standard stimulus amplitude of 10°, 20°, 30° or 40°. The discrimination thresholds for each standard stimulus were established at the 75% correct response level. The obtained thresholds followed Weber's Law indicating that larger amplitudes were associated with higher discrimination thresholds. Based on a linear regression function the overall Weber's fraction, defined as the slope of the line, was computed to be 0.09. This result expands the present limited knowledge on wrist proprioception showing that its proprioceptive acuity follows Weber's law.