Tactile Acuity is Enhanced in Blindness

Goldreich, Daniel; Kanics, Ingrid M.

doi:10.1523/jneurosci.23-08-03439.2003

Cited by 356 publications

(288 citation statements)

References 38 publications

(56 reference statements)

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“…On the one hand, the sample size for this test was low and the relationship was strong enough (beta = +39) that it might reach significance with a more fully powered study. On the other hand, several studies of tactile acuity in blind Braille readers have reported a similar result, finding no relationship between practice variables (e.g., being an early blind subject or being an avid present day Braille reader) and better tactile acuity (Goldreich & Kanics, 2003Van Boven et al, 2000).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Tactile acuity in experienced Tai Chi practitioners: evidence for use dependent plasticity as an effect of sensory-attentional training

et al. 2008

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The scientific discovery of novel training paradigms has yielded better understanding of basic mechanisms underlying cortical plasticity, learning and development. This study is a first step in evaluating Tai Chi (TC), the Chinese slow-motion meditative exercise, as a training paradigm that, while not engaging in direct tactile stimulus training, elicits enhanced tactile acuity in long-term practitioners, The rationale for this study comes from the fact that, unlike previously studied directtouch tactile training paradigms, TC practitioners focus specific mental attention on the body's extremities including the fingertips and hands as they perform their slow routine.To determine whether TC is associated with enhanced tactile acuity, experienced adult TC practitioners were recruited and compared to age-gender matched controls. A blinded assessor used a validated method (Van Boven, Hamilton, Kauffman, Keenan, & Pascual-Leone, 2000) to compare TC practitioners' and controls' ability to discriminate between two different orientations (parallel and horizontal) across different grating widths at the fingertip. Study results showed TC practitioners' tactile spatial acuity was superior to that of the matched controls (p<.04). There was a trend showing TC may have an enhanced effect on older practitioners (p<.066), suggesting TC may slow age related decline in this measure. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to evaluate a long-term attentional practice's effects on a perceptual measure. Longitudinal studies are needed to examine whether TC initiates or is merely correlated with perceptual changes and whether it elicits long-term plasticity in primary sensory cortical maps. Further studies should also assess whether related somatosensory attentional practices (such as Yoga, mindfulness meditation and Qigong) achieve similar effects.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Tactile acuity in experienced Tai Chi practitioners: evidence for use dependent plasticity as an effect of sensory-attentional training

et al. 2008

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“…d, Scatterplot of threshold versus distal phalanx surface area, with female (red) and male (blue) regression lines. Women: red Ⅺ; men: blue E. Kanics, 2003). We next investigated the cause of this tactile sex difference.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the Duquesne experiments, we used a two-down one-up staircase, with 14 reversals per testing block, as described by Goldreich and Kanics (2003). The Duquesne data consisted of two testing blocks per participant, taken from a larger experiment of eight blocks (the two blocks were collected in a lit room with the participant's eyes open, corresponding to the McMaster testing condition; the other blocks, not relevant to the current study, tested different lighting conditions).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Diminutive Digits Discern Delicate Details: Fingertip Size and the Sex Difference in Tactile Spatial Acuity

Peters¹,

Hackeman²,

Goldreich³

2009

J. Neurosci.

173

149

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We have observed that passive tactile spatial acuity, the ability to resolve the spatial structure of surfaces pressed upon the skin, differs subtly but consistently between the sexes, with women able to perceive finer surface detail than men. Eschewing complex central explanations, we hypothesized that this sex difference in somatosensory perception might result from simple physical differences between the fingers of women and men. To investigate, we tested 50 women and 50 men on a tactile grating orientation task and measured the surface area of the participants' index fingertips. In subsets of participants, we additionally measured finger skin compliance and optically imaged the fingerprint microstructure to count sweat pores. We show here that tactile perception improves with decreasing finger size, and that this correlation fully explains the better perception of women, who on average have smaller fingers than men. Indeed, when sex and finger size are both considered in statistical analyses, only finger size predicts tactile acuity. Thus, a man and a woman with fingers of equal size will, on average, enjoy equal tactile acuity. We further show that sweat pores, and presumably the Merkel receptors beneath them, are packed more densely in smaller fingers.

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“…In contrast, other studies reported that blind subjects outperformed sighted subjects under certain conditions (Rossetti et al, 1996;Van Boven et al, 2000;Goldreich and Kanics, 2003;Gaunet and Rossetti, 2006;Alary et al, 2008). Thus, there is no consensus on the sensorimotor performance of blind subjects compared with normally sighted subjects.…”

Section: Performance Of Blind Versus Blindfolded Normally Sighted Submentioning

confidence: 92%

Evidence for a Proprioception-Based Rapid On-Line Error Correction Mechanism for Hand Orientation during Reaching Movements in Blind Subjects

Gosselin-Kessiby

Kalaska²,

Messier³

2009

J. Neurosci.

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The contribution of visual experience to the perception and sensorimotor control of spatial orientation of the hand was investigated in blind subjects. In "orientation-matching" tasks, subjects aligned a match handle held in their right hand to a target handle held in their left hand and fixed in different orientations, with both arms outstretched. In "letter-posting" task 1, the same subjects reached out and simultaneously oriented their right hand to insert the match handle into a target slot fixed in the same range of orientations. Orientations were signaled proprioceptively by a reference handle held in the left hand. Final hand orientation errors were smaller when blind subjects simultaneously reached out and rotated their hand to insert the match handle into the target slot in letter-posting task 1 than when they held their arm extended and aligned the handles in the orientation-matching task. In letter-posting task 2, blind subjects first aligned their hand to the orientation of the target and then subsequently reached to the target with the instruction to not change hand orientation during reaching. Despite the instruction, subjects showed a reduction in absolute hand orientation error from the beginning to the end of the reach. In all tasks, performance of blind subjects was very similar to that of blindfolded normally sighted subjects. These findings provide the first evidence of an automatic on-line error-correction mechanism for hand orientation guided only by proprioceptive inputs during reaching in blind subjects, and reveal that the on-line mechanism does not depend on prior visual experience.

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Tactile Acuity is Enhanced in Blindness

Cited by 356 publications

References 38 publications

Tactile acuity in experienced Tai Chi practitioners: evidence for use dependent plasticity as an effect of sensory-attentional training

Tactile acuity in experienced Tai Chi practitioners: evidence for use dependent plasticity as an effect of sensory-attentional training

Diminutive Digits Discern Delicate Details: Fingertip Size and the Sex Difference in Tactile Spatial Acuity

Evidence for a Proprioception-Based Rapid On-Line Error Correction Mechanism for Hand Orientation during Reaching Movements in Blind Subjects

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