The Neural Basis of Haptic Perception

Goodman, James M.; Bensmaı̈a, Sliman J.

doi:10.1002/9781119170174.epcn205

Cited by 16 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 239 publications

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“…Both the increase in RMS velocity of texture-evoked vibrations and the shift to higher frequencies explains why the effect of speed is most pronounced in the responses of PC fibres, weaker in RA fibres, and weakest in slowly adapting (SA1) fibres [23]. Indeed, PC fibres are sensitive to the rate of displacement of the skin [24] and peak in sensitivity at the high frequencies (greater than 100 Hz) [25]; RA fibres are also sensitive to vibratory speed but peak in sensitivity at intermediate frequencies; SA1 fibres are least sensitive to vibratory speed and peak in sensitivity at low frequencies. While the peripheral representation of texture is highly speed dependent, afferent signals are differentiated downstream-spatially and temporally-and these neural computations give rise to a more speed-independent representation of texture [26].…”

Section: Implications For Tactile Texture Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of scanning speed on texture-elicited vibrations

Greenspon

McLellan

Lieber

et al. 2020

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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To sense the texture of a surface, we run our fingers across it, which leads to the elicitation of skin vibrations that depend both on the surface and on exploratory parameters, particularly scanning speed. The transduction and processing of these vibrations mediate the ability to discern fine surface features. The objective of the present study is to characterize the effect of changes in scanning speed on texture-elicited vibrations to better understand how the exploratory movements shape the neuronal representation of texture. To this end, we scanned a variety of textures across the fingertip of human participants at a variety of speeds (10–160 mm s −1 ) while measuring the resulting vibrations using a laser Doppler vibrometer. First, we found that the intensity of the vibrations—as indexed by root-mean-square velocity—increases with speed but that the skin displacement remains constant. Second, we found that the frequency composition of the vibrations shifts systematically to higher frequencies with increases in scanning speed. Finally, we show that the speed-dependent shift in frequency composition accounts for the speed-dependent change in intensity.

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Section: Implications For Tactile Texture Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of scanning speed on texture-elicited vibrations

Greenspon

McLellan

Lieber

et al. 2020

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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“…Quality, on the other hand, is determined by the specific spatiotemporal pattern of activation elicited in the nervous system. Some patterns of activation give rise to a texture percept, others to a vibration percept, and others to a motion percept, and these patterns co-occur and are multiplexed in the nerve 22 . Furthermore, quality is shaped in part by which classes of tactile nerve fibers are activated by the stimulus 23 .…”

Section: Stimulation Frequency Shapes Sensory Qualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Frequency shapes the quality of tactile percepts evoked through electrical stimulation of the nerves

Graczyk

Christie

et al. 2020

Preprint

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The quality of tactile percepts evoked by skin vibrations depends on the frequency of stimulation: as frequency increases, the vibrotactile pitch increases. In the present study, we assessed the degree to which the quality of tactile percepts evoked via electrical stimulation of the somatosensory nerves is shaped by the frequency of the pulse train (PF). Participants with chronically-implanted peripheral nerve interfaces rated the quality of electrical pulse trains that varied in both PF and pulse width (PW) along a single continuum and also described the subjective quality of the sensory experience using perceptual descriptors. We found that increases in PF led to systematic increases in perceived frequency independent of PW, up to about 50 Hz, at which point perceived frequency leveled off or decreased. PF discrimination matched its vibrotactile counterpart, yielding a Weber fraction of ~0.2 at low frequencies, but discrimination performance was abolished above 50 Hz. Finally, we found that PF systematically shaped quality as characterized by verbal descriptors at low but not high frequencies. Furthermore, even when probed in this complex, multi-dimensional space defined by descriptors, PF modulated tactile quality along a single perceptual continuum. In conclusion, we show that quality can be shaped by imposing temporal patterns on a fixed neural population, highlighting the importance of spike timing in the peripheral nerve. However, this temporal patterning can only be resolved up to about 50 Hz when stimulation is applied to populations of tactile nerve fibers.

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“…The modeling of impulse-response functions obtained from vector autoregressive (VAR) analysis revealed that distinct sets of pairwise exchanges of multifractal fluctuations entailed accuracy in heaviness and length judgments. These results suggest that the accuracy of perception via dynamic touch hinges on specific flowing patterns of multifractal fluctuations that people wear on their anatomical sleeves.Research into haptic perception typically concentrates on mechanoreceptors and their supporting neuronal processes, such as mechanoreceptor physiology and neuronal processing of passive somatosensory feedback [1,2]. Despite the significant insights of this research, this focus risks ignoring crucial aspects of active perception.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research into haptic perception typically concentrates on mechanoreceptors and their supporting neuronal processes, such as mechanoreceptor physiology and neuronal processing of passive somatosensory feedback [1,2]. Despite the significant insights of this research, this focus risks ignoring crucial aspects of active perception.…”

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confidence: 99%

Multifractal signatures of perceptual processing on anatomical sleeves of the human body

Mangalam

Carver²,

Kelty-Stephen

2020

Preprint

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Research into haptic perception typically concentrates on mechanoreceptors and their supporting neuronal processes. This focus risks ignoring crucial aspects of active perception. For instance, bodily movements influence the information available to mechanoreceptors, entailing that movement facilitates haptic perception. Effortful manual wielding of an object prompts feedback loops at multiple spatiotemporal scales, rippling outwards from the wielding hand to the feet, maintaining an upright posture, and interweaving to produce a nonlinear web of fluctuations throughout the body. Here, we investigated whether and how this bodywide nonlinearity engenders a flow of multifractal fluctuations that could support perception of object properties via dynamic touch. Blindfolded participants manually wielded weighted dowels and reported judgments of heaviness and length. Mechanical fluctuations on the anatomical sleeves, from hand to the upper body, as well as to the postural center of pressure, showed evidence of multifractality arising from nonlinear temporal correlations across scales. The modeling of impulse-response functions obtained from vector autoregressive (VAR) analysis revealed that distinct sets of pairwise exchanges of multifractal fluctuations entailed accuracy in heaviness and length judgments. These results suggest that the accuracy of perception via dynamic touch hinges on specific flowing patterns of multifractal fluctuations that people wear on their anatomical sleeves.Research into haptic perception typically concentrates on mechanoreceptors and their supporting neuronal processes, such as mechanoreceptor physiology and neuronal processing of passive somatosensory feedback [1,2]. Despite the significant insights of this research, this focus risks ignoring crucial aspects of active perception. For instance, bodily movements influence the information available to mechanoreceptors, entailing that movement facilitates haptic perception [3][4][5]. The present work investigated how bodywide mechanical interactions facilitate "dynamic" or "effortful" perception of heaviness and length of manuallywielded, visually-occluded objects. Specifically, we test two possibilities: first, that statistical structure in mechanical fluctuations flows across disparate anatomical locations (i.e., beyond the wielding hand) to coordinate perceptual judgments and, second, that the structure of this flow of statistical regularities impacts the accuracy of these judgments. The bodywide multifractal tensegrity (MFT) may simplify the degrees-of-freedom problem of spatiotemporally organizing afferent activityThe human body is highly complex, consisting of an enormous number of components, connected, interacting, and evolving via networks spanning multiple space and time scales. In traditional treatments of nervous-system networks, mechanoreceptor activity specifying the states of joints, muscles, and tendons flow through the spinal neurons to the brain. The challenge for this treatment is how the central executive can organize spati...

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The Neural Basis of Haptic Perception

Cited by 16 publications

References 239 publications

Effect of scanning speed on texture-elicited vibrations

Effect of scanning speed on texture-elicited vibrations

Frequency shapes the quality of tactile percepts evoked through electrical stimulation of the nerves

Multifractal signatures of perceptual processing on anatomical sleeves of the human body

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