Texture-induced vibrations in the forearm during tactile exploration

• Main Authors: Benoit eDelhaye, Vincent eHayward, Philippe eLefèvre, Jean-Louis eThonnard
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2012-07-01
• Series: Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience
• Subjects: Touch; Vibration; roughness; haptics; texture
• Online Access: http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnbeh.2012.00037/full

Humans can detect and discriminate between fine variations of surface roughness using activetouch. It is hitherto believed that roughness perception is mediated mostly by cutaneous andsubcutaneous afferents located in the fingertips. However, recent findings have shown thatfollowing abolishment of cutaneous afferences resulting from trauma or pharmacologicalintervention, the ability of subjects to discriminate between textures roughness was notsignificantly altered. These findings suggest that the somatosensory system is able to collecttextural information from other sources than fingertip afference. It follows that signalsresulting of the interaction of a finger with a rough surface must be transmitted to stimulatereceptor populations in regions far away from the contact. This transmission was characterizedby measuring in the wrist vibrations originating at the fingertip and thus propagating throughthe finger, the hand and the wrist during active exploration of textured surfaces. The spectralanalysis of the vibrations taking place in the forearm tissues revealed regularities that werecorrelated with the scanned surface and the speed of exploration. In the case of periodictextures, the vibration signal contained a fundamental frequency component corresponding tothe finger velocity divided by the spatial period of the stimulus. This regularity was found for awide range of textural length scales and scanning velocities. For non-periodic textures, thespectrum of the vibration did not contain obvious features that would enable discriminationbetween the different stimuli. However, for both periodic and non-periodic stimuli, theintensity of the vibrations could be related to the microgeometry of the scanned surfaces.