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Kong G, Cataldo A, Nitu M, Dupin L, Gomi H, Haggard P. Interhemispheric communication during haptic self-perception. Proc Biol Sci 2022; 289:20221977. [PMID: 36475437 PMCID: PMC9727658 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2022.1977] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/12/2022] Open
Abstract
During the haptic exploration of a planar surface, slight resistances against the hand's movement are illusorily perceived as asperities (bumps) in the surface. If the surface being touched is one's own skin, an actual bump would also produce increased tactile pressure from the moving finger onto the skin. We investigated how kinaesthetic and tactile signals combine to produce haptic perceptions during self-touch. Participants performed two successive movements with the right hand. A haptic force-control robot applied resistances to both movements, and participants judged which movement was felt to contain the larger bump. An additional robot delivered simultaneous but task-irrelevant tactile stroking to the left forearm. These strokes contained either increased or decreased tactile pressure synchronized with the resistance-induced illusory bump encountered by the right hand. We found that the size of bumps perceived by the right hand was enhanced by an increase in left tactile pressure, but also by a decrease. Tactile event detection was thus transferred interhemispherically, but the sign of the tactile information was not respected. Randomizing (rather than blocking) the presentation order of left tactile stimuli abolished these interhemispheric enhancement effects. Thus, interhemispheric transfer during bimanual self-touch requires a stable model of temporally synchronized events, but does not require geometric consistency between hemispheric information, nor between tactile and kinaesthetic representations of a single common object.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gaiqing Kong
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17–19 Queen Square, London WCIN 3AZ, UK,Neuroscience Research Centre of Lyon, INSERM U1028—CNRS UMR5292, Inserm Building, 16 avenue du doyen Lépine, 69500 Bron, France
| | - Antonio Cataldo
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17–19 Queen Square, London WCIN 3AZ, UK,Institute of Philosophy, University of London, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU, UK
| | - Miruna Nitu
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17–19 Queen Square, London WCIN 3AZ, UK
| | - Lucile Dupin
- Institut de Psychiatrie et Neurosciences de Paris, Inserm U 1266—Université de Paris—Hôpital Sainte-Anne, Paris, France
| | - Hiroaki Gomi
- NTT Communication Science Laboratories, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, Atsugi, Japan
| | - Patrick Haggard
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17–19 Queen Square, London WCIN 3AZ, UK,Chaire Blaise Pascal de la Région Ile de France, Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Computationnelles, Département d'Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure, PSL University, Paris, France
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Arslanova I, Takamuku S, Gomi H, Haggard P. Multi-digit tactile perception I: motion integration benefits for tactile trajectories presented bimanually. J Neurophysiol 2022; 128:418-433. [PMID: 35822710 PMCID: PMC9359661 DOI: 10.1152/jn.00022.2022] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/22/2022] Open
Abstract
Interactions with objects involve simultaneous contact with multiple, not necessarily adjacent, skin regions. While advances have been made in understanding the capacity to selectively attend to a single tactile element among distracting stimulations, here, we examine how multiple stimulus elements are explicitly integrated into an overall tactile percept. Across four experiments, participants averaged the direction of two simultaneous tactile motion trajectories of varying discrepancy delivered to different fingerpads. Averaging performance differed between within- and between-hands conditions in terms of sensitivity and precision but was unaffected by somatotopic proximity between stimulated fingers. First, precision was greater in between-hand compared to within-hand conditions, demonstrating a bimanual perceptual advantage in multi-touch integration. Second, sensitivity to the average direction was influenced by the discrepancy between individual motion signals, but only for within-hand conditions. Overall, our experiments identify key factors that influence perception of simultaneous tactile events. In particular, we show that multi-touch integration is constrained by hand-specific rather than digit-specific mechanisms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Irena Arslanova
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, grid.83440.3bUniversity College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Shinya Takamuku
- NTT Communication Science Laboratories, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, Atsugi, Kanagawa, Japan
| | - Hiroaki Gomi
- NTT Communication Science Laboratories, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, Atsugi, Kanagawa, Japan
| | - Patrick Haggard
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, grid.83440.3bUniversity College London, London, United Kingdom
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Li H, Yang J, Yu Y, Wang W, Liu Y, Zhou M, Li Q, Yang J, Shao S, Takahashi S, Ejima Y, Wu J. Global surface features contribute to human haptic roughness estimations. Exp Brain Res 2022; 240:773-789. [PMID: 35034179 PMCID: PMC8918205 DOI: 10.1007/s00221-021-06289-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/02/2021] [Accepted: 12/08/2021] [Indexed: 12/03/2022]
Abstract
Previous studies have paid special attention to the relationship between local features (e.g., raised dots) and human roughness perception. However, the relationship between global features (e.g., curved surface) and haptic roughness perception is still unclear. In the present study, a series of roughness estimation experiments was performed to investigate how global features affect human roughness perception. In each experiment, participants were asked to estimate the roughness of a series of haptic stimuli that combined local features (raised dots) and global features (sinusoidal-like curves). Experiments were designed to reveal whether global features changed their haptic roughness estimation. Furthermore, the present study tested whether the exploration method (direct, indirect, and static) changed haptic roughness estimations and examined the contribution of global features to roughness estimations. The results showed that sinusoidal-like curved surfaces with small periods were perceived to be rougher than those with large periods, while the direction of finger movement and indirect exploration did not change this phenomenon. Furthermore, the influence of global features on roughness was modulated by local features, regardless of whether raised-dot surfaces or smooth surfaces were used. Taken together, these findings suggested that an object’s global features contribute to haptic roughness perceptions, while local features change the weight of the contribution that global features make to haptic roughness perceptions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Huazhi Li
- Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in Health Systems, Okayama University, 3-1-1 Tsushima-Naka, Kita-ku, Okayama, 700-8530, Japan
| | - Jiajia Yang
- Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in Health Systems, Okayama University, 3-1-1 Tsushima-Naka, Kita-ku, Okayama, 700-8530, Japan. .,Section On Functional Imaging Methods, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.
| | - Yinghua Yu
- Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in Health Systems, Okayama University, 3-1-1 Tsushima-Naka, Kita-ku, Okayama, 700-8530, Japan.,Section On Functional Imaging Methods, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
| | - Wu Wang
- School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China
| | - Yulong Liu
- Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in Health Systems, Okayama University, 3-1-1 Tsushima-Naka, Kita-ku, Okayama, 700-8530, Japan
| | - Mengni Zhou
- Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in Health Systems, Okayama University, 3-1-1 Tsushima-Naka, Kita-ku, Okayama, 700-8530, Japan
| | - Qingqing Li
- Department of Teacher Education, Wenzhou University, Wenzhou, China
| | - Jingjing Yang
- School of Computer Science and Technology, Changchun University of Science and Technology, Changchun, China
| | - Shiping Shao
- School of Social Welfare, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea
| | - Satoshi Takahashi
- Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in Health Systems, Okayama University, 3-1-1 Tsushima-Naka, Kita-ku, Okayama, 700-8530, Japan
| | - Yoshimichi Ejima
- Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in Health Systems, Okayama University, 3-1-1 Tsushima-Naka, Kita-ku, Okayama, 700-8530, Japan
| | - Jinglong Wu
- Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in Health Systems, Okayama University, 3-1-1 Tsushima-Naka, Kita-ku, Okayama, 700-8530, Japan.,School of Mechatronical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China
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Arslanova I, Wang K, Gomi H, Haggard P. Somatosensory evoked potentials that index lateral inhibition are modulated according to the mode of perceptual processing: comparing or combining multi-digit tactile motion. Cogn Neurosci 2020; 13:47-59. [PMID: 33307992 DOI: 10.1080/17588928.2020.1839403] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/22/2022]
Abstract
Many perceptual studies focus on the brain's capacity to discriminate between stimuli. However, our normal experience of the world also involves integrating multiple stimuli into a single perceptual event. Neural mechanisms such as lateral inhibition are believed to enhance local differences between sensory inputs from nearby regions of the receptor surface. However, this mechanism would seem dysfunctional when sensory inputs need to be combined rather than contrasted. Here, we investigated whether the brain can strategically regulate the strength of suppressive interactions that underlie lateral inhibition between finger representations in human somatosensory processing. To do this, we compared sensory processing between conditions that required either comparing or combining information. We delivered two simultaneous tactile motion trajectories to index and middle fingertips of the right hand. Participants had to either compare the directions of the two stimuli, or to combine them to form their average direction. To reveal preparatory tuning of somatosensory cortex, we used an established event-related potential design to measure the interaction between cortical representations evoked by digital nerve shocks immediately before each tactile stimulus. Consistent with previous studies, we found a clear suppression between cortical activations when participants were instructed to compare the tactile motion directions. Importantly, this suppression was significantly reduced when participants had to combine the same stimuli. These findings suggest that the brain can strategically switch between a comparative and a combinative mode of somatosensory processing, according to the perceptual goal, by preparatorily adjusting the strength of a process akin to lateral inhibition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Irena Arslanova
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK
| | - Keying Wang
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK
| | - Hiroaki Gomi
- NTT Communication Science Laboratories, NTT Corporation, Atsugishi, Japan
| | - Patrick Haggard
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK
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