Vibrotactile adaptation impairs discrimination of fine, but not coarse, textures.

The effect of vibrotactile adaptation on the ability to discriminate textured surfaces was examined in three experiments. The surfaces were rectilinear arrays of pyramids produced by etching of silicon wafers. Adaptation to 100-Hz vibration severely hampered discrimination of surfaces with spatial periods below 100 microm (Experiment 1), but had little effect on the discrimination of coarser textures (Experiment 2). To determine which vibrotactile channel--Rapidly Adapting or Pacinian--plays the larger role in mediating the discrimination of fine textures, widely separated adapting frequencies (10 and 250 Hz) were used in Experiment 3. The fact that high- but not low-frequency adaptation interfered with discrimination suggests that the Pacinian system contributes importantly to this ability. Taken as a whole, the results of this study strongly support the duplex theory of tactile texture perception, according to which different mechanisms--spatial and vibrotactile--mediate the perception of coarse and fine textures, respectively.

[1]  R. T. Verrillo,et al.  Vibrotactile sensitivity and the frequency response of the Pacinian corpuscle , 1966 .

[2]  V. Mountcastle,et al.  The sense of flutter-vibration: comparison of the human capacity with response patterns of mechanoreceptive afferents from the monkey hand. , 1968, Journal of neurophysiology.

[3]  J. Hyvärinen,et al.  Cortical neuronal mechanisms in flutter-vibration studied in unanesthetized monkeys. Neuronal periodicity and frequency discrimination. , 1969, Journal of neurophysiology.

[4]  M. M. Taylor,et al.  Fingertip force, surface geometry, and the perception of roughness by active touch , 1972 .

[5]  S. Lederman.  Tactile roughness of grooved surfaces: The touching process and effects of macro- and microsurface structure , 1974 .

[6]  M. M. Taylor,et al.  Tactile roughness of grooved surfaces: A model and the effect of friction , 1975 .

[7]  Verrillo Rt,et al.  Effect of prior stimulation on vibrotactile thresholds. , 1977 .

[8]  G A Gescheider,et al.  The effects of a surround on vibrotactile thresholds. , 1978, Sensory processes.

[9]  G A Gescheider,et al.  Selective adaptation of vibrotactile thresholds. , 1979, Sensory processes.

[10]  K. O. Johnson,et al.  Tactile spatial resolution. II. Neural representation of Bars, edges, and gratings in monkey primary afferents. , 1981, Journal of neurophysiology.

[11]  R. S. Johansson,et al.  Construction of three-dimensional microstructures to be used in studies of the cutaneous perception of texture , 1982 .

[12]  S. Lederman,et al.  The role of vibration in the tactual perception of roughness , 1982, Perception & psychophysics.

[13]  J. Ochoa,et al.  Sensations evoked by intraneural microstimulation of single mechanoreceptor units innervating the human hand. , 1983, The Journal of physiology.

[14]  S. Lederman.  Tactual roughness perception: Spatial and temporal determinants. , 1983 .

[15]  G. Lamb.  Tactile discrimination of textured surfaces: psychophysical performance measurements in humans. , 1983, The Journal of physiology.

[16]  F. J. Clark,et al.  Microstimulation of single tactile afferents from the human hand. Sensory attributes related to unit type and properties of receptive fields. , 1984, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[17]  S. Bolanowski,et al.  Four channels mediate the mechanical aspects of touch. , 1988, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[18]  M. Heller.  Texture perception in sighted and blind observers , 1989, Perception & psychophysics.

[19]  D. Katz.  The World of Touch , 1989 .

[20]  R. Romo,et al.  Frequency discrimination in the sense of flutter: psychophysical measurements correlated with postcentral events in behaving monkeys , 1990, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[21]  C. Connor,et al.  Tactile roughness: neural codes that account for psychophysical magnitude estimates , 1990, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[22]  K. Johnson,et al.  Neural coding of tactile texture: comparison of spatial and temporal mechanisms for roughness perception , 1992, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[23]  G. Gescheider.  Psychophysics: The Fundamentals , 1997 .

[24]  Kenneth O. Johnson,et al.  Neural Coding Mechanisms in Tactile Pattern Recognition: The Relative Contributions of Slowly and Rapidly Adapting Mechanoreceptors to Perceived Roughness , 1997, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[25]  J. DiCarlo,et al.  Structure of Receptive Fields in Area 3b of Primary Somatosensory Cortex in the Alert Monkey , 1998, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[26]  R. Klatzky,et al.  Tactile roughness perception with a rigid link interposed between skin and surface , 1999, Perception & psychophysics.

[27]  T Mano,et al.  Mechanisms of fine-surface-texture discrimination in human tactile sensation. , 1999, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[28]  S J Bensmaïa,et al.  Complex tactile waveform discrimination. , 2000, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[29]  M. Hollins,et al.  Imposed Vibration Influences Perceived Tactile Smoothness , 2000, Perception.

[30]  M. Hollins,et al.  Evidence for the duplex theory of tactile texture perception , 2000, Perception & psychophysics.