Presentation to Imperial College Professors of my MSc in Biomedical Engineering project : Robotic device for assessing cerebral response to social touch with fMRI and NIRS in autistic children

1. Robotic Device for
assessing cerebral response
to social touch with fMRI
and NIRS in autistic
children
Jeanne Pigassou
Supervisors : Pr. Etienne Burdet & Alessandro Allievi

2. Introduction
 Collaboration with CBCD (Centre of Brain and
Cognitive Development )
 to be included in their British Autism Study on Infant
Siblings (BASIS)
 Project specifications
 Robotic device
 Social touch
 MRI-proved
 Compatible with NIRS
 Velocity of the stroke

3. 1.Background
 Subject of study: autistic children
 Touches 1/100 children
 Sensory impairements
 Social touch
 Early detection of Autism
 From 2 years of age
 Genetics: risk 2% to 18% higher for siblings
 Cerebral activity Imaging techniques on infants
 Functional MRI
 Near Infra-red Spectroscopy (NIRS)

4. 2.Device
 paintbrush + pneumatic piston: social touch stimuli
 optic fibres + mirror : position sensor
 DAQ: acquisition of the data
 Labview program : control of the valves and record data
fMRI scanner
TTL output
paintbrush device
Pipes
Air in
Air supply
Control
box
Laptop
(Labview)
DAQ
3 port
Valves
Optic
sensor
NIRS machine
RS 32 cable

5. 2. Paintbrush device
 Constructing the sensor
 Paintbrush tip
 Cushion
 Control of the valves
Square wave :
duty cycle α=
75% to 95%
Switch of the
valves: t=2s
t Vmean=α* Vmax

6. 3. Preliminary Results
 Test on 2 adults without Imaging
 Comfort and functionality of cushion and paintbrush
 First assessment of “social touch” : 6 speeds tested
 fMRI test on adult on Wednesday
Speed (mm/s) 21 17,5 14 10,5 7 3,5
Appreciation Adult 1 + + ++ + - -
Appreciation Adult 2 + ++ ++ ++ + -

7. Conclusion
 A robotic and systematic device to study cortical
activity related to touch sensitivity in adults,
expected to be the same in infants
 Improvements:
 Miniaturization of the sensor
 Control of the stroke speed

8. Demonstration

9. Aknowledgement
Thank you very much
Pr Etienne Burdet & Alessandro Allievi and all the
members of the Human Robotics Group
Pr Mark Johnson , Dr Teodora Gliga , Sarah Lloyd Fox
and all the team of the CBCD
Research associate Nick Everdell from UCL

10. Thank you for your attention
Do you have any questions ?