To identify genes regulating the development of the six touch receptor neurons, we screened the F(2) progeny of mutated animals expressing an integrated mec-2::gfp transgene that is expressed mainly in these touch cells. From 2638 mutated haploid genomes, we obtained 11 mutations representing 11 genes that affected the production, migration, or outgrowth of the touch cells. Eight of these mutat...

Un-myelinated C tactile afferents (CT afferents) are a key finding in affective touch. These fibers, which activate in response to a caress-like touch to hairy skin (CT afferents are not found in palm skin), may have more in common with interoceptive systems encoding body ownership, than afferent systems processing other tactile stimuli. We tested whether subjective embodiment of a rubber hand ...

Somatosensory impairments occur in about half of the cases of stroke. These impairments range from primary deficits in tactile detection and the perception of features, to higher order impairments in haptic object recognition and bodily experience. In this paper, we review the influence of active- and self-touch on somatosensory impairments after stroke. Studies have shown that self-touch impro...

Touch-sensitive devices become more and more common all-around. Many people use touch interaction, especially on small devices like iPhone or other mobile phones and handhelds. But do they really understand the different gestures, know which gesture is the correct one for the intended action and do they know how to transfer the gestures to bigger devices and surfaces? This paper reports about u...

Traditional hand geometry-based systems use low-resolution cameras or scanners to capture users’ hand images with the help of peggies or by forcing them to touch a screen. Those systems measure a hand shape to extract its features, like lengths and widths of fingers, and hand contour, for recognition. Unfortunately, traditional techniques face unsolved problems: low discriminability due to low-...

BACKGROUND The response to gentle body touch in C. elegans requires a degenerin channel complex containing four proteins (MEC-2, MEC-4, MEC-6, and MEC-10). The central portion of the integral membrane protein MEC-2 contains a stomatin-like region that is highly conserved from bacteria to mammals. The molecular function of this domain in MEC-2, however, is unknown. RESULTS Here, we show that M...