An individual's skin stiffness predicts their tactile discrimination of compliance

Abstract

Individual differences in tactile acuity have been correlated with age, gender and finger size, whereas the role of the skin's stiffness has been underexplored. Using an approach to image the 3‐D deformation of the skin surface during contact with transparent elastic objects, we evaluate a cohort of 40 young participants, who present a diverse range of finger size, skin stiffness and fingerprint ridge breadth. The results indicate that skin stiffness generally correlates with finger size, although individuals with relatively softer skin can better discriminate compliant objects. Analysis of contact at the skin surface reveals that softer skin generates more prominent patterns of deformation, in particular greater rates of change in contact area, which correlate with higher rates of perceptual discrimination of compliance, regardless of finger size. Moreover, upon applying hyaluronic acid to soften individuals’ skin, we observe immediate, marked and systematic changes in skin deformation and consequent improvements in perceptual acuity in differentiating compliance. Together, the combination of 3‐D imaging of the skin surface, biomechanics measurements, multivariate regression and clustering, and psychophysical experiments show that subtle distinctions in skin stiffness modulate the mechanical signalling of touch and shape individual differences in perceptual acuity. imageKey points Although declines in tactile acuity with ageing are a function of multiple factors, for younger people, the current working hypothesis has been that smaller fingers are better at informing perceptual discrimination because of a higher density of neural afferents. To decouple relative impacts on tactile acuity of skin properties of finger size, skin stiffness, and fingerprint ridge breadth, we combined 3‐D imaging of skin surface deformation, biomechanical measurements, multivariate regression and clustering, and psychophysics. The results indicate that skin stiffness generally correlates with finger size, although it more robustly correlates with and predicts an individual's perceptual acuity. In particular, more elastic skin generates higher rates of deformation, which correlate with perceptual discrimination, shown most dramatically by softening each participant's skin with hyaluronic acid. In refining the current working hypothesis, we show the skin's stiffness strongly shapes the signalling of touch and modulates individual differences in perceptual acuity.

Tactile Location Perception Encoded by Gamma-Band Power

“…Previous studies have shown that gender indeed matters in terms of the density of mechanoreceptors [46], tactile discrimination and acuity [47,48], etc. Generally speaking, young females tend to show better tactile perception.…”

Texture perception at the foot sole: comparison between walking, sitting, and to the hand

“…Specifically, skin on the foot sole is thicker (Chao et al, 2011), harder, and more variable, than palmar skin (Falanga and Bucalo, 1993;Strzalkowski et al, 2015). It has been shown that skin stiffness directly affects discrimination accuracy for the softness of different materials (Li and Gerling, 2023), with greater stiffness leading to poorer compliance discrimination. This suggests that perception at the foot may be poorer compared to the hand due to differences in skin mechanics.…”