Tablet Technology for Writing and Drawing During Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging: A Review

Overview

Journal Sensors (Basel)

Publisher MDPI

Specialty Biotechnology

Date 2021 Jan 12

PMID 33430023

Citations 1

Authors

Zhongmin Lin

Fred Tam

Nathan W Churchill

Tom A Schweizer

Simon J Graham

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a powerful modality to study brain activity. To approximate naturalistic writing and drawing behaviours inside the scanner, many fMRI-compatible tablet technologies have been developed. The digitizing feature of the tablets also allows examination of behavioural kinematics with greater detail than using paper. With enhanced ecological validity, tablet devices have advanced the fields of neuropsychological tests, neurosurgery, and neurolinguistics. Specifically, tablet devices have been used to adopt many traditional paper-based writing and drawing neuropsychological tests for fMRI. In functional neurosurgery, tablet technologies have enabled intra-operative brain mapping during awake craniotomy in brain tumour patients, as well as quantitative tremor assessment for treatment outcome monitoring. Tablet devices also play an important role in identifying the neural correlates of writing in the healthy and diseased brain. The fMRI-compatible tablets provide an excellent platform to support naturalistic motor responses and examine detailed behavioural kinematics.

Citing Articles

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Lotze M Front Hum Neurosci. 2024; 18:1459140.

PMID: 39474131 PMC: 11521045. DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2024.1459140.

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