• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.129-134
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• 2013

The essential tremor is an involuntary oscillatory movement of body parts. Conventional treatments of essential tremor have little effects in some patients and also leads to significant side effects. Alternative to these treatments, sensory stimulation may have beneficial effects on the essential tremor. The purpose of this study was to analyze an effect of sensory stimulation on essential tremor. Ten patients with essential tremor ($67.4{\pm}8.82$ yrs, 5 men and 5 women) participated in this study. Three-axis gyro sensors were attached on index finger, hand and forearm of patients. Task of 'arms outstretched forward' was performed with and without sensory stimulation. Vectorsum of three dimensional angular velocities (pitch, roll, yaw) was calculated. Outcome measures included root-meansquare (RMS) mean of the vector-sum amplitude, total power, peak power and peak frequency. RMS amplitude, total power and peak power were reduced by sensory stimulation (p < 0.05). Peak frequency was not affected by sensory stimulation. The results indicate that the sensory stimulation is useful to suppress the essential tremor.