Extended Data Fig. 8: Cold object detection using thermal feedback for amputee and non-amputee participants.
a, Participants controlled the vMPL using EMG (A1) or motion tracking (A2, B5, B6) with a wireless armband. Thermal feedback was provided to the phantom hand (amputee) or tip of the index finger (non-amputee). b, EMG decoding (A1). Only elbow movements were used for the virtual task. Data presented as mean ± s.e.m. of n = 5 feature sets. c, The time spent touching each object during the virtual task for A2 was similar between bulkHC (n = 40 touches over 10 trials) and TFTEC (n = 54 touches, 15 trials) devices. d, The two non-amputee participants were more successful detecting virtual cold objects with the bulkHC (n = 24 trials, 5 blocks) and TFTEC (n = 34 trials, 7 blocks) device compared to the bulk device (n = 25 trials, 5 blocks). Bar plots represent mean ± s.e.m.; data points represent blocks with up to five trials. e, For the two non-amputee participants, the normalized time spent touching virtual objects was significantly shorter for the TFTEC (n = 112 touches, 34 trials) compared to the bulk (n = 133 touches, 25 trials) and bulkHC (n = 92 touches, 24 trials) devices. Data normalized using max-min normalization for each participant. f, Time spent touching each virtual object. For B5, n = 80, 58, and 46 touches, over 15 trials with each device, for bulk, bulkHC, and TFTEC, respectively. For B6, n = 53, 34, and 66 touches for bulk (10 trials), bulkHC (9 trials), and TFTEC (19 trials), respectively. c, e, f, Data represent independent virtual object touches and all trials are independent. Violin plot whiskers represent the minimal and maximal values, vertical lines indicate first and third quartiles, horizontal lines are means, and white dots are the medians. P values were generated with a two-sided Mann-Whitney U test.
