A Fundamental Study on Tonic Vibration Reflex in Forearm Pronation/Supination to Suppress Essential Tremor Movements

Essential tremor (ET) is one of the most common movement disorders. Undesired involuntary periodic movements are generated in ET patients. Some devices have been developed to suppress ET movements up to the present. In this paper, Tonic Vibration Reflex (TVR) is studied to investigate the possibility to suppress ET movements. The TVR is a phenomenon of human reflex which is induced by applying mechanical vibration stimulation to a human muscle. If a counter-phase movement of the ET movement of the patient is artificially generated by the TVR, the ET movement would be canceled. In order to investigate its possibility, fundamental study on the TVR is carried out in this study. In order to confirm the possibility of generating the TVR in forearm pronation/supination, the effect of the amplitude and the range of frequency of vibration stimulation on the TVR in forearm pronation/supination is studied in this paper. The effect of forearm posture is also studied. Furthermore, the effect of the on-and-off vibration stimulation on the TVR in forearm pronation/supination is investigated. The experimental results show the possibility of tremor movement suppression with the TVR.