Vibrotactile forward masking: Effects of the amplitude and duration of the masking stimulus

Gescheider, George A.; Santoro, Kristine E.; Makous, James C.; Bolanowski, Stanley J.

doi:10.1121/1.413808

Cited by 25 publications

(19 citation statements)

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“…The average slope (0.383) of the masking functions was smaller than the average slope (0.745) of a previous study (Gü çlü and Bolanowski 2005a). The slope shows the masking efficiency (Gescheider et al 1995), which suggests that the P-channel thresholds of the current HSs were affected less as a function of the masking level. However, this does not mean that the masking effect was not present, for a range of 17-52 dB SL masking level, the thresholds shifted up by 4-24 dB in the overall data.…”

Section: Forward Maskingcontrasting

confidence: 65%

Neural coding in the Non-Pacinian I tactile channel: A psychophysical and simulation study of magnitude estimation

Güçlü

Dincer

2012

Somatosensory & Motor Research

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Psychophysical experiments and model simulations were performed to identify plausible neural codes representing stimulus magnitude in the Non-Pacinian I (NP I) tactile channel associated with rapidly adapting fibers. Sinusoidal mechanical displacements were applied on the fingertips of eight human subjects. The NP I channel was isolated by elevating the thresholds of the Pacinian (P) channel during forward masking. Psychophysical magnitude estimates were obtained at 40 Hz for the NP I channel and at 250 Hz for the P channel by using a small contactor (radius: 2 mm). The P channel was additionally tested with a larger contactor (radius: 4.3 mm) to compensate for the lower innervation density of the Pacinian fibers. The magnitude estimates were fitted by power functions. The exponent (1.02) obtained with the large contactor for the P channel was higher than the exponent (0.68) obtained with the small contactor, but it was not statistically different from the exponent (1.21) obtained with the small contactor for the NP I channel. This suggests that the exponent increases when more fibers are recruited in the P channel. Six hypothetical neural codes were tested by using a computational population model for the rapidly adapting afferents. The validity of each code was evaluated by comparing psychophysical and simulation exponents, by finding the correlations between the magnitude estimates and the neural code results, and by a novel distance metric for measuring the proximity between the data sets. The codes based on the number of active fibers, the total spike count, the mean and the standard deviation of the spike count distribution yielded the best results, while the codes based on the interspike intervals were not related with the magnitude estimates.

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Section: Forward Maskingcontrasting

confidence: 65%

Neural coding in the Non-Pacinian I tactile channel: A psychophysical and simulation study of magnitude estimation

Güçlü

Dincer

2012

Somatosensory & Motor Research

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“…We specifically focused on the P channel because of its high sensitivity and relatively sharp frequency tuning, which makes it easier to isolate for vibrotactile detection Zwislocki 1984a, 1984b;Bensmaia et al 2005;Gescheider et al 2005;Güçlü et al 2005Güçlü et al , 2006Güçlü and Ö ztek 2007;Pawson et al 2009;Yıldız and Güçlü 2013). By applying forward masking to elevate the thresholds of the P channel, the effects of suprathreshold stimuli can also be studied (Gescheider et al 1995;Güçlü and Bolanowski 2005a;Güçlü and Ö ztek 2007). Moreover, the P channel is particularly suited for the detection of vibrations transmitted through grasped objects (Brisben et al 1999), which may also involve daily situations influenced by movement-related gating.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of passive and active movement on vibrotactile detection thresholds of the Pacinian channel and forward masking

Yıldız

Toker

Özkan

et al. 2015

Somatosensory & Motor Research

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We investigated the gating effect of passive and active movement on the vibrotactile detection thresholds of the Pacinian (P) psychophysical channel and forward masking. Previous work on gating mostly used electrocutaneous stimulation and did not allow focusing on tactile submodalities. Ten healthy adults participated in our study. Passive movement was achieved by swinging a platform, on which the participant's stimulated hand was attached, manually by a trained operator. The root-mean-square value of the movement speed was kept in a narrow range (slow: 10-20 cm/s, fast: 50-60 cm/s). Active movement was performed by the participant him-/herself using the same apparatus. The tactile stimuli consisted of 250-Hz sinusoidal mechanical vibrations, which were generated by a shaker mounted on the movement platform and applied to the middle fingertip. In the forward-masking experiments, a high-level masking stimulus preceded the test stimulus. Each movement condition was tested separately in a two-interval forced-choice detection task. Both passive and active movement caused a robust gating effect, that is, elevation of thresholds, in the fast speed range. Statistically significant change of thresholds was not found in slow movement conditions. Passive movement yielded higher thresholds than those measured during active movement, but this could not be confirmed statistically. On the other hand, the effect of forward masking was approximately constant as the movement condition varied. These results imply that gating depends on both peripheral and central factors in the P channel. Active movement may have some facilitatory role and produce less gating. Additionally, the results support the hypothesis regarding a critical speed for gating, which may be relevant for daily situations involving vibrations transmitted through grasped objects and for manual exploration.

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“…The effects of delivering an adapting stimulus on the perception of subsequent test stimuliparticularly the reduction in sensation -has been characterized in some detail (Delemos and Hollins, 1996;Gescheider et al, 1995;Goble and Hollins, 1993;Laskin and Spencer, 1979;Tommerdahl et al, 2005a;Verrillo and Gescheider, 1977). Many psychophysical studies have reported that the presentation of an adapting stimulus causes an increase in the detection threshold, and thus a reduction in the perceived intensity, of a subsequent stimulus (for review see (Gescheider et al, 1995;Goble and Hollins, 1993;Verrillo, 1985;Verrillo and Gescheider, 1977)).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many psychophysical studies have reported that the presentation of an adapting stimulus causes an increase in the detection threshold, and thus a reduction in the perceived intensity, of a subsequent stimulus (for review see (Gescheider et al, 1995;Goble and Hollins, 1993;Verrillo, 1985;Verrillo and Gescheider, 1977)). More specifically, Gescheider et al showed that the threshold shift which occurred after the presentation of an adapting stimulus increased systematically with adapting stimulus duration (Gescheider et al, 1995). Fewer studies, however, have examined the impact of an adapting stimulus on the perceptual task of amplitude discrimination.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of adaptation on the capacity to differentiate simultaneously delivered dual-site vibrotactile stimuli

et al. 2007

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The capacity of 20 healthy adult subjects for detecting differences in the amplitude of two simultaneously delivered 25 Hz vibrotactile stimuli was assessed both in the absence and presence of prior exposure to different conditions of adapting stimulation. Results obtained from this study demonstrate that increasing durations of adapting stimulation at one of the two skin sites, in the range of 0.2 to 2.0 seconds, leads to a systematic and progressive decrease in a subject's ability to accurately discriminate between the two different amplitudes. Delivery of adapting stimuli to both of the sites of skin stimulation prior to simultaneous delivery of the test and standard stimuli, however, leads to an improvement in amplitude discrimination performance -a finding which is consistent with prior published psychophysical studies that demonstrate improvements in discriminatory capacity with much longer durations of adaptation. Striking parallels between the results obtained in this study and those reported in a prior study of the effects of vibrotactile adaptation on the optical response of squirrel monkey contralateral SI cortex to vibrotactile stimulation (Simons et al., 2007;Simons et al., 2005) suggest that the perceptual effects detected in this study could be attributable to adaptationinduced alterations of SI response.

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Vibrotactile forward masking: Effects of the amplitude and duration of the masking stimulus

Cited by 25 publications

References 0 publications

Neural coding in the Non-Pacinian I tactile channel: A psychophysical and simulation study of magnitude estimation

Neural coding in the Non-Pacinian I tactile channel: A psychophysical and simulation study of magnitude estimation

Effects of passive and active movement on vibrotactile detection thresholds of the Pacinian channel and forward masking

Effects of adaptation on the capacity to differentiate simultaneously delivered dual-site vibrotactile stimuli

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