Tactile sensory channels over-ruled by frequency decoding system that utilizes spike pattern regardless of receptor type

eLife

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[1] Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden;School of Medicine, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia;Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, Australia;Biomedical Engineering and Neuroscience, MARCS Institute, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia;Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden;Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, Australia;Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden;Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, Australia;School of Medicine, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia;The Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Australia;School of Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, Australia;Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, Australia;School of Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, Australia;Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, Australia;Biomedical Engineering and Neuroscience, MARCS Institute, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia;School of Medicine, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia;

关键词: tactile;    Pacinian afferents;    vibrotactile;    spike timing;    haptics;    pitch;    Human;   

DOI  :  10.7554/eLife.46510

来源: publisher

【 摘 要 】

10.7554/eLife.46510.001The established view is that vibrotactile stimuli evoke two qualitatively distinctive cutaneous sensations, flutter (frequencies < 60 Hz) and vibratory hum (frequencies > 60 Hz), subserved by two distinct receptor types (Meissner’s and Pacinian corpuscle, respectively), which may engage different neural processing pathways or channels and fulfil quite different biological roles. In psychological and physiological literature, those two systems have been labelled as Pacinian and non-Pacinian channels. However, we present evidence that low-frequency spike trains in Pacinian afferents can readily induce a vibratory percept with the same low frequency attributes as sinusoidal stimuli of the same frequency, thus demonstrating a universal frequency decoding system. We achieved this using brief low-amplitude pulsatile mechanical stimuli to selectively activate Pacinian afferents. This indicates that spiking pattern, regardless of receptor type, determines vibrotactile frequency perception. This mechanism may underlie the constancy of vibrotactile frequency perception across different skin regions innervated by distinct afferent types.

【 授权许可】

CC BY