An Arduino-based interactive tool for pain education: a pilot study

Abstract

As occurs with many other topics of pain curricula, lectures on pain neurophysiology are predominantly theoretical, and the practical experiences required to deliver that content to learners can be problematic regarding sustainability, logistics, and funding. Therefore, this study presents the development and testing of a microcontroller-based interactive tool to assist university-level pain neurophysiology teaching and facilitate a hands-on approach to exploring the functional connectivity of pain pathways. The proposed system consists of a sensing module that conveys electrical signals elicited by thermal and mechanical stimuli to an Arduino Nano board. The latter acts as a processing module and contains a codified version of a Neuroid-based network model of the pain circuitry. Our prototype was tested during a lecture on pain neurophysiology attended by forty-seven undergraduate health sciences students, who were instructed to observe the neural responses to sensory stimulation while altering the pain circuitry’s excitatory-inhibitory balance. We collected participants’ opinions via a 3-point Likert-type scale with seventeen questions regarding the tool’s composition, appropriateness, and theoretical foundation. Besides allowing students to explore the functional connectivity of pain pathways without the limitations posed by in-vivo or in-vitro models, the proposed tool achieved overall positive feedback among the surveyed.

Keywords

• Pain education
• interactive learning approaches
• neuron model
• real-time simulation
• Arduino microcontroller
• Stephen Darwin, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile