The Medical Research Ethics Committee at St. Vincent's University Hospital, Dublin gave approval for the recruitment of patients with cervical dystonia, their siblings (unaffected by dystonia), and healthy controls, to participate in the protocol described below.
1. Hardware & Software Solutions
Note: Two hardware options have been developed to display visual stimuli with precise inter-stimulus intervals. Both were designed and built in-house at the Trinity Centre for Bioengineering, Trinity College Dublin, and have been previously described5,16. Those wishing to replicate the exact hardware solutions used herein may request same by contacting the Trinity Centre for Bioengineering directly. Alternatively, a full set of instructions including 3D printing files for the headset, instructions for the accompanying Arduino microcontroller, etc. can be downloaded from http://www.dystoniaresearch.ie/temporal-discrimination-threshold/. The stimuli presented in the table top approach may be generated using custom programs in Presentation (e.g., Neurobehavioural Systems), installed on a desktop computer and programmed to control the light-emitting diodes (LED) via the parallel port of the computer. Alternatively, as described below, the table top LEDs may be controlled via an Arduino microcontroller. Both the Presentation code and Arduino files are also available to download from the above link.
Figure 1: (a) Schematic of the design of the headset. A pair of yellow LEDs (5 mm diameter),and the red fixation LED (3 mm diameter), are placed on the left and right side of the participant via a head-mounted unit and made visible by way of reflection in the mirrors in front of the user. (b) Schematic 3D model of the headset. The headset was developed from laser-sintered nylon plastic, weighs 0.70 kg, has a low transparency index and is black in color to minimize light penetrance. (a and b) are reproduced, with slight modification, from Butler et al.16 with permission from IOP Publishing. (c) The LED stimulus box for table-top presentation.
2. Stimulus Presentation
Note: Two approaches to stimulus presentation have been employed.
3. Data Analysis
Examples of filled score sheets are provided in Tables 1 and 2, where these respectively represent results following staircase and random stimulus presentation methods. The thresholds for each run (the timing of the first of three stimulus pairs deemed to be 'different'), are highlighted. In the case of Table 1, the TDT is calculated as 25 ms (i.e., the median of 40, 25, 25, 25, 45, 25, 40, 10 ms). These data are taken from a 35 year old woman who participated in a previous study18. The mean and standard deviation for TDT values from women in this age bracket were 27.48 ms and 10.86 ms, respectively. Therefore the Z-score for this individual can be calculated as:
As this Zscore is below 2.5, this individual has a normal TDT.
Responses from the same individual following random stimulus presentation are shown in Table 2. Ordering these data is an important step prior to continuing with analysis.
Distribution Analysis
Key stages in the distribution analysis are illustrated in Table 1 (data padding and response averaging) and Figure 2. The sample data used in this analysis is from the same subject as that discussed above and shown in Tables 1 and 2. The plots in Figure 2 are generated from the downloadable MATLAB.exe file. The left side shows the observed data, the cumulative Gaussian functions fitted to the bootstrapped data (following 2000 iterations), and the average cumulative Gaussian function. The goodness of fit measure is illustrated on the right-hand side. Also shown are the temporal discrimination thresholds, the fit parameters, the point of subjective equality (PSE), and just noticeable difference (JND) values. The right side shows goodness of fit measure the log likelihood ratio (deviance) for the observed data (red horizontal line) and the Monte-Carlo generated log likelihood ratio distribution and the 95% confidence intervals (dashed horizontal lines).
The same MATLAB executable exports the TDT, PSE and JND values and bootstrapped cut-offs of 2.5%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 97.5% confidence intervals as well as the goodness of fit or deviance and cutoffs to an excel file. Table 3 provides the outputs generated for the data in Tables 1 and 2. By way of comparison, the TDT values for staircase and random stimulus presentation methods, obtained by the standard method (median of the 8 thresholds), are 25 ms and 50 ms respectively; whereas Table 3 provides the TDT values obtained following bootstrapping of the data. These are 23.75 ms and 48.75 ms respectively.
Figure 2: The left-hand column shows the cumulative Gaussian Distributions for (a) results following the staircase method of stimulus presentation, and (b) the random method of stimulus presentation. The black dots show the original data (the proportion of perceived 'different' responses as a function of inter-stimulus interval, or temporal asynchrony). The light grey curves represent the 2000 Gaussian functions that were fitted to the bootstrapped data. The dark grey curve represents the average cumulative Gaussian function. Values for the Point of Subjective Equality (PSE) (mean) and Just Noticeable Difference (JND) (standard deviation) and the TDT value, calculated from the full distribution are detailed in Table 3. Please click here to view a larger version of this figure.
Table 1: Sample data following staircase presentation method, with inter-stimulus intervals (ISI) increasing by 5 ms each time. (a) Data shown for each of the two conditions (top LED first x2, and bottom LED first x2) for the right- and left-hand sides, giving a total of eight runs. 's' represents a response of 'same', and 'd', 'different'. The time intervals used to calculate the TDT are the ISI's corresponding to the first of three consecutive 'different' responses. Therefore, the TDT= 25 ms, the median of 40, 25, 25, 25, 45, 25, 40, and 10. (b) The same data as shown in (a), but encoded such that a '0' represents a response of 'same', and '1' represents 'different'. Data padding (to the longest run) is illustrated. This is a pre-processing step prior to applying the distribution analysis. (c) Averaged responses for each ISI. Note these values are used to generate the psychometric distribution and are plotted in Figure 2.
Table 2: Responses from the same participant as Table 1, this time stimuli are presented with randomized inter-stimulus intervals (ISI). (a) Data for the two conditions on the right-hand side (top LED first x2 and bottom LED first x2). For compactness, the data from the left-hand side are not shown here. However, all eight runs are used in all analysis. (b) The same data sorted by incrementing ISI. The threshold for each of the four right-hand side runs are indicated with dashed boxes.
Table 3: Summary of Gaussian distribution and Goodness of Fit analysis for the results from the staircase presentation method shown in Table 1, and random presentation method shown in Table 2 (all data for this participant, e.g. total of eight runs (4 left and 4 right) have been used in above analysis). Point of subjective equality, PSE; just noticeable difference, JND; temporal discrimination, TDT; Goodness of Fit, GoF.
TDT head set | Can be supplied by Trinity Centre for Bioengineering, Trinity College Dublin. Alternatively full instructions are available for free download from http://www.dystoniaresearch.ie/temporal-discrimination-threshold/ | 1 | A custom-built, portable device for the presentation of visual stimuli. |
TDT table top LED box | Can be supplied by Trinity Centre for Bioengineering, Trinity College Dublin. Alternatively full instructions are available for free download from http://www.dystoniaresearch.ie/temporal-discrimination-threshold/ | 2 | A custom-built, table-top device for the presentation of visual stimuli. |
Microcontroller | Can be supplied by Trinity Centre for Bioengineering, Trinity College Dublin. Alternatively full instructions are available for free download from http://www.dystoniaresearch.ie/temporal-discrimination-threshold/ | 3 | A custom-built microcontroller for the delivery of visual stimuli in staircase or random order, with precise inter-stimulus intervals. |
The temporal discrimination threshold (TDT) is the shortest time interval at which an observer can discriminate two sequential stimuli as being asynchronous (typically 30-50 ms). It has been shown to be abnormal (prolonged) in neurological disorders, including cervical dystonia, a phenotype of adult onset idiopathic isolated focal dystonia. The TDT is a quantitative measure of the ability to perceive rapid changes in the environment and is considered indicative of the behavior of the visual neurons in the superior colliculus, a key node in covert attentional orienting. This article sets out methods for measuring the TDT (including two hardware options and two modes of stimuli presentation). We also explore two approaches of data analysis and TDT calculation. The application of the assessment of temporal discrimination to the understanding of the pathogenesis of cervical dystonia and adult onset idiopathic isolated focal dystonia is also discussed.
The temporal discrimination threshold (TDT) is the shortest time interval at which an observer can discriminate two sequential stimuli as being asynchronous (typically 30-50 ms). It has been shown to be abnormal (prolonged) in neurological disorders, including cervical dystonia, a phenotype of adult onset idiopathic isolated focal dystonia. The TDT is a quantitative measure of the ability to perceive rapid changes in the environment and is considered indicative of the behavior of the visual neurons in the superior colliculus, a key node in covert attentional orienting. This article sets out methods for measuring the TDT (including two hardware options and two modes of stimuli presentation). We also explore two approaches of data analysis and TDT calculation. The application of the assessment of temporal discrimination to the understanding of the pathogenesis of cervical dystonia and adult onset idiopathic isolated focal dystonia is also discussed.
The temporal discrimination threshold (TDT) is the shortest time interval at which an observer can discriminate two sequential stimuli as being asynchronous (typically 30-50 ms). It has been shown to be abnormal (prolonged) in neurological disorders, including cervical dystonia, a phenotype of adult onset idiopathic isolated focal dystonia. The TDT is a quantitative measure of the ability to perceive rapid changes in the environment and is considered indicative of the behavior of the visual neurons in the superior colliculus, a key node in covert attentional orienting. This article sets out methods for measuring the TDT (including two hardware options and two modes of stimuli presentation). We also explore two approaches of data analysis and TDT calculation. The application of the assessment of temporal discrimination to the understanding of the pathogenesis of cervical dystonia and adult onset idiopathic isolated focal dystonia is also discussed.