BACKGROUND To test the hypothesis that certain psychotic symptomatology is due to a defect in self-monitoring, we investigated the ability of groups of psychiatric patients to differentiate perceptually between self-produced and externally produced tactile stimuli. METHODS Responses to tactile stimulation were assessed in three groups of subjects: schizophrenic patients; patients with bipolar...

This article discusses recent progress towards understanding of human tactile perception by exploiting finite element analysis to simulate the experiments done in vivo, and statistical tools to correlate simulated output with microneurography recordings. Elucidation of the mechanisms that govern human tactile perception is essential for understanding of human touch, not only from psychophysical...

Stimulus anticipation improves perception. To account for this improvement, we investigated how stimulus processing is altered by anticipation. In contrast to a large body of previous work, we employed a demanding perceptual task and investigated sensory responses that occur beyond early evoked activity in contralateral primary sensory areas: Stimulus-induced modulations of neural oscillations....

Prominent theories highlight the importance of bodily perception for self-consciousness, but it is currently not known whether bodily perception is based on interoceptive or exteroceptive signals or on integrated signals from these anatomically distinct systems. In the research reported here, we combined both types of signals by surreptitiously providing participants with visual exteroceptive i...

The human ability to follow speech gestures through the visual modality is a core component of speech perception. Remarkably, speech can be perceived not only by the ear and by the eye but also by the hand, with speech gestures felt from manual tactile contact with the speaker’s face. In the present study, early crossmodal interactions were investigated by comparing early auditory evoked potent...

Visual information is increasingly important yet methods for its access by blind persons are inadequate. This paper describes and evaluates TACTICS, a system for the automatic visual to tactile translation of digitized images. The results of experiments testing perception of TACTICS-generated tactile images are provided.

INTRODUCTION Intrapersonal touch is a powerful tool for communicating emotions and can among many things evoke feelings of eroticism and sexual arousal. The peripheral neural mechanisms of erotic touch signaling have been less studied. C tactile afferents (unmyelinated low-threshold mechanoreceptors), known to underpin pleasant aspects of touch processing, have been posited to play an important...

Correlations between personality traits and a wide range of sensory thresholds were examined. Participants (N = 124) completed a personality inventory (NEO-FFI) and underwent assessment of olfactory, trigeminal, tactile and gustatory detection thresholds, as well as examination of trigeminal and tactile pain thresholds. Significantly enhanced odor sensitivity in socially agreeable people, signi...

A systematic review identified tactile assessments used in children with cerebral palsy (CP), but their reproducibility is unknown. Sixteen children with unilateral CP and 31 typically developing children (TDC) were assessed 2-4 weeks apart. Test-retest percent agreements within one point for children with unilateral CP (and TDC) were Semmes-Weinstein monofilaments: 75% (90%); single-point loca...

The manipulation of objects commonly involves motion between object and skin. In this review, we discuss the neural basis of tactile motion perception and its similarities with its visual counterpart. First, much like in vision, the perception of tactile motion relies on the processing of spatiotemporal patterns of activation across populations of sensory receptors. Second, many neurons in prim...