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Journal ArticleDOI

Transfer of the curvature aftereffect in dynamic touch.

01 Oct 2008-Neuropsychologia (Elsevier Limited)-Vol. 46, Iss: 12, pp 2966-2972
TL;DR: The existence and intermanual transfer of curvature aftereffects for dynamic touch were investigated and it is concluded that the representation of object information depends on the exploration mode that is used to acquire information.
About: This article is published in Neuropsychologia.The article was published on 2008-10-01 and is currently open access. It has received 21 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Curvature.

Summary (4 min read)

1. Introduction

  • A haptic curvature aftereffect is a phenomenon in which a flat surface feels concave after the prolonged touching of a convex surface, and vice versa.
  • Later, they showed that the aftereffect also occurred when small variations in the exploration manner were applied, but no aftereffect was found when the adaptation and test stimuli were touched by different hands (Vogels, Kappers, & Koenderink, 1997).
  • Existence of an aftereffect when curved surfaces were statically touched by only a single fingertip (Van der Horst et al., 2008).

1.1. Exploration modes to perceive curvature

  • The haptic perception and representation of curvature has been investigated for several manners of exploration.
  • This exploration manner is appropriate to obtain information from highly curved surfaces.
  • Psychophysical studies have shown that this exploration manner is opsych B.J. van der Horst et al. /.
  • Nevertheless, the shape of weakly curved stimuli can be perceived by static touch when the contact length with the stimulus is increased by placing the whole finger or several fingers together on the stimulus surface (Pont, Kappers, & Koenderink, 1997; Pont et al., 1999).
  • The thresholds decreased with increasing contact length, up to about 0.5 m−1 for a contact length of 15 cm.

1.2. Representation of curvature information

  • Static and dynamic touch provide different ways to acquire shape information from an object.
  • This suggests that curvature information is processed in a different way for dynamic touch.
  • The representation level of the curvature information may depend on the exploration mode.
  • More insight into the representation of curvature information can be obtained by studying the aftereffect and its transfer.
  • In vision, establishing aftereffect transfer has successfully uncovered the representation of perceived phenomena like motion (see e.g., Mather, Verstraten, & Anstis, 1998; Moulden, 1980; Tao, Lankheet, van de Grind, & van de Wezel, 2003; Wade, Swanston, & de Weert, 1993).

1.3. Active and passive dynamic touch

  • A distinction is made between active and passive dynamic touch.
  • In active dynamic touch, the subject moves the finger over the surface of a fixed stimulus; in passive dynamic touch, the stimulus moves underneath a finger that the subject keeps at a fixed position.
  • Passive dynamic touch shares with active dynamic touch that there is an analogous moving contact between the finger and the stimulus.
  • Therefore, similar results might be expected for active and passive dynamic touch.
  • Passive dynamic touch has in common with static touch that the finger stays in the same location.

2. Experiment 1

  • In the first experiment, the authors studied the existence and transfer of a dynamic aftereffect in active and passive dynamic touch.
  • The first goal was to demonstrate the existence of a curvature aftereffect in dynamic touch.
  • Having the same ability to acquire shape information does not necessarily imply that this information is represented at the same level.
  • Thus, the transfer pattern might deviate from the transfer characteristics of static aftereffects, as previously reported (Van der Horst et al., 2008; Vogels et al., 1997).
  • The shape could not be deduced from the immediate contact between the finger and the stimulus, but movement was required.

2.1.1. Design

  • Four conditions were studied in a two × two design.
  • The exploration mode was either active or passive dynamic touch.
  • In the active mode, the stimuli were explored by a self-induced movement with the index finger over the surface of a stationary stimulus.
  • A further distinction was made between the employment of either a single finger or different fingers.
  • In the same-finger mode, the same index finger was used to touch both the adaptation and the test stimulus; in the oppositefinger mode, the right index finger touched the adaptation stimulus, and the left index finger touched the test stimulus.

2.1.2. Setup

  • Subjects were seated behind a table, with their arms resting on a support.
  • Only the right slit was used in the same-finger mode.
  • The platform remained in position in the active conditions.
  • Fig. 1 illustrates the setup of the experiment.

2.1.4. Procedure

  • During a trial, the adaptation stimulus was touched by the index finger of the right hand for 11 s.
  • Three back-and-forth movements were made during the adaptation phase.
  • After 4 s, the test stimulus was touched with an index finger for a single side-to-side movement.
  • Practice trials were conducted to accustom the subjects to the proper exploration time.
  • The order in which the experimental conditions were conducted was partly counterbalanced.

2.1.5. Subjects

  • Eight, paid subjects participated (four male and four female, mean age 21 years).
  • All subjects were right-handed, as established by a standard questionnaire (Coren, 1993).

2.1.6. Analysis

  • For each subject and condition, the responses in the convex adaptation trials were separated from the responses in the concave adaptation trials.
  • A psychometric function (cumulative Gaussian) was fitted to the data to determine the point of subjective equality (PSE).
  • In the active conditions, the adaptation and test stimuli were stimuli moved underneath the index finger.
  • The dark bars represent the results for nger.
  • The PSEs and the magnitude of the aftereffect are indicated.

2.2. Results

  • The mean results for each condition are given in Fig. 3a.
  • The error bars represent the standard errors.
  • Visual inspection of this graph shows that an aftereffect was obtained in all conditions.
  • In addition, the magnitude of the aftereffect was higher in the active conditions compared to the passive conditions.

2.3. Discussion

  • This experiment shows the existence of a dynamic curvature aftereffect and, most surprisingly, a full transfer of this effect.
  • This result differs from the partial transfer of the static curvature aftereffect, as obtained in their previous study (Van der Horst et al., 2008).
  • To place the finding in a broader perspective, only some specific visual motion aftereffects show a full interocular transfer.
  • In general, there is only partial transfer of the effect, the strength of which depends on several stimulus and measurement parameters (Tao et al., 2003; Wade et al., 1993).
  • Furthermore, the difference in magnitude of the aftereffect indicates that there are differences in curvature representation of active and passive dynamic touch.

3. Experiment 2

  • In the second experiment, the transfer between active and passive dynamic touch was investigated.
  • In the passive–active condition, the order was reversed.
  • In both conditions, subjects used only their right hands for adaptation and testing.
  • Before the experiment, the authors formulated two main hypotheses.
  • Second, a higher aftereffect could be obtained in the active–passive condition; this would suggest that active and passive touch share the same representation, but adaptation is stronger for active touch.

3.1. Methods

  • The same setup was used for this experiment as in the previous experiment.
  • The authors did not use the ±1.8 m−1 stimuli but increased the number of repetitions per stimulus.
  • The order in which the experiment was performed was counterbalanced among subjects.
  • There were eight, right-handed subjects (four male and four female, mean age 21 years), none of whom were involved in the first experiment.

3.2. Results

  • The mean results for each condition are presented in Fig. 3b.
  • Independent samples t-tests were performed in order to compare the results of the second experiment to the same-finger results of the first experiment.
  • The result for the passive–active condition was not significantly different from that of the active condition but was significantly higher than that of the passive condition (t14 = 0.7, p = 0.5 and t14 = 3.9, p = 0.001, respectively).

3.3. Discussion

  • This experiment reveals an aftereffect transfer from active to passive dynamic touch, and vice versa.
  • The magnitude of the effect was higher in the passive–active condition than in the active–passive condition.
  • The correspondence between the first and the second experiment is that a stronger aftereffect is obtained when the test stimulus is actively explored, irrespective of the manner of touching the adaptation stimulus.

4.1. The existence of a dynamic curvature aftereffect

  • The authors demonstrated the occurrence of an aftereffect when curved surfaces are dynamically touched with a single index finger.
  • This finding is a considerable extension of the original discovery of Gibson (1933), since the authors employed a quantitative approach and displayed the existence of the effect for a relatively short adaptation time.
  • The dynamic curvature aftereffect is similar to previously reported static curvature aftereffects (Van der Horst et al., 2008; Vogels et al., 1996).

4.2. Dynamic touch versus static touch

  • One of the most important findings of this study is the complete intermanual transfer of the dynamic curvature aftereffect.
  • Since the immediate contact of a single finger is insufficient, curvature information must be derived from the dynamic contact between the finger and the stimulus surface.
  • The point of contact is displacement is too small to provide sufficient information.
  • The remaining sources cannot individually provide information about the shape of the stimulus, since they are indistinguishable for convex and concave shapes.

4.3. Active dynamic touch versus passive dynamic touch

  • Intermanual transfer of the aftereffect was found for both active and passive dynamic touch.
  • In the previous section, the authors argued that information about the direction of movement is essential to distinguish a weakly curved shape.
  • The correspondence between these findings is that a smaller aftereffect was obtained when the test stimulus was touched passively instead of explored actively.
  • A related aspect is that active and passive dynamic touch require different sensorimotor involvement.
  • Following adaptation to a convex shape to convex curvature information, the pressure profile of exploring a flat surface corresponds to that of a slightly concave surface without adaptation.

4.4. Conclusion

  • The current study demonstrates the existence of a haptic dynamic curvature aftereffect and a complete intermanual transfer of this effect, which suggests that dynamically obtained curvature information is represented at a high level in the brain.
  • A comparison between active and passive dynamic touch shows a larger aftereffect for actively tested curvature.
  • In conclusion, this study provides evidence that the representation of object information depends on the exploration mode that is used to obtain that information.
  • The definition of passive dynamic touch as used in the current study differs from the more strict definitions of passive touch, in which there is no role for the efferent commands (Chapman, 1993; Loomis & Lederman, 1986, chapter 31).

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Citations
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Book ChapterDOI
13 Jun 2012
TL;DR: To investigate whether there is a difference in precision of unimanual and bimanual information, participants were asked to discriminate stiffness unimanually as well as bimanually and the results clearly show thatbimanual perception of stiffness was more precise than unimanUAL perception.
Abstract: We often handle an object with both of our hands. The information from the two hands has to be combined to arrive at a single percept of the object. Research on multi-sensory perception has shown that redundant information between the senses is integrated such that the combined percept is more precise than either of the two individual inputs. However, while bimanual information can be redundant, it is not necessarily the case because both hands are usually touching different parts of the same object. To investigate whether there is a difference in precision of unimanual and bimanual information, we asked participants to discriminate stiffness unimanually as well as bimanually. Our results clearly show that bimanual perception of stiffness was more precise than unimanual perception. The precision of the bimanual percept was in agreement with the precision predicted from combining the two unimanual inputs in a statistical optimal fashion.

9 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A robust repulsive tactile duration aftereffect is demonstrated with the method of single stimuli, which suggests the early somatosensory areas with the topographic organization of hands play an essential role in sub-second tactile duration perception.

8 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Bimanual haptic exploration can be as effective as unimanual exploration, showing that there is no necessary reduction in ability when haptic shape comparison requires interhemispheric communication.
Abstract: In three experiments participants haptically discriminated object shape using unimanual (single hand explored two objects) and bimanual exploration (both hands were used, but each hand, left or right, explored a separate object). Such haptic exploration (one versus two hands) requires somatosensory processing in either only one or both cerebral hemispheres; previous studies related to the perception of shape/curvature found superior performance for unimanual exploration, indicating that shape comparison is more effective when only one hemisphere is utilized. The current results, obtained for naturally shaped solid objects (bell peppers, Capsicum annuum) and simple cylindrical surfaces demonstrate otherwise: bimanual haptic exploration can be as effective as unimanual exploration, showing that there is no necessary reduction in ability when haptic shape comparison requires interhemispheric communication. We found that while successive bimanual exploration produced high shape discriminability, the participants’ bimanual performance deteriorated for simultaneous shape comparisons. This outcome suggests that either interhemispheric interference or the need to attend to multiple objects simultaneously reduces shape discrimination ability. The current results also reveal a significant effect of age: older adults’ shape discrimination abilities are moderately reduced relative to younger adults, regardless of how objects are manipulated (left hand only, right hand only, or bimanual exploration).

7 citations

BookDOI
20 Aug 2015
TL;DR: Most of the authors' everyday activities involving touch (think of handling and identifying objects, maintenance of body posture, sensing the texture of food in the mouth, estimating the weight of an object, etc.) fall into the class of haptic perception.
Abstract: Tactile perception refers to perception by means of touch mediated only through the cutaneous receptors (mechanoreceptors and thermoreceptors) located in the skin (Loomis and Lederman, 1986; Lederman and Klatzky, 2009). When also kinaesthetic receptors (mechanoreceptors embedded in muscles, joints and tendons) are involved, the term haptic perception is used. Four main types of cutaneous mechanoreceptors have been distinguished: Merkel nerve endings (small receptive field, slowly adapting), Meissner corpuscles (small receptive field, fast adapting), Pacinian corpuscles (large receptive field, slowly adapting) and Ruffini endings (large receptive fields, fast adapting). Together these are responsible for the human’s large range of sensitivities to all kinds of stimulation, such as pressure, vibration and skin stretch. The kinaesthetic sense, or kinaesthesia, contributes to the perception of the positions and movement of the limbs (Proske and Gandevia, 2009). The main kinaesthetic receptor is the muscle spindle that is sensitive to changes in length of the muscle; its sensitivity can be adapted to the circumstances. Most of our everyday activities involving touch (think of handling and identifying objects, maintenance of body posture, sensing the texture of food in the mouth, estimating the weight of an object, etc.) fall into the class of haptic perception.

7 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
19 Feb 2014-PLOS ONE
TL;DR: The results showed a clear influence of shape: the haptic aftereffect was much stronger if adaptation and test stimuli were identical in shape than if their shapes were different, suggesting that higher cortical areas are involved in this afterefect and that it cannot be due to adaptation of peripheral receptors.
Abstract: Recently, we showed a strong haptic size aftereffect by means of a size bisection task: after adaptation to a large sphere, subsequently grasped smaller test spheres felt even smaller, and vice versa. In the current study, we questioned whether the strength of this aftereffect depends on shape. In four experimental conditions, we determined the aftereffect after adaptation to spheres and tetrahedra and subsequent testing also with spheres and tetrahedra. The results showed a clear influence of shape: the haptic aftereffect was much stronger if adaptation and test stimuli were identical in shape than if their shapes were different. Therefore, it would be more appropriate to term such aftereffects haptic shape-size aftereffects, as size alone could not be the determining factor. This influence of shape suggests that higher cortical areas are involved in this aftereffect and that it cannot be due to adaptation of peripheral receptors. An additional finding is that the geometric property or combination of properties participants use in the haptic size bisection task varies widely over participants, although participants themselves are quite consistent.

7 citations

References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
29 Sep 1995-Science
TL;DR: A sensorimotor integration task was investigated in which participants estimated the location of one of their hands at the end of movements made in the dark and under externally imposed forces, providing direct support for the existence of an internal model.
Abstract: On the basis of computational studies it has been proposed that the central nervous system internally simulates the dynamic behavior of the motor system in planning, control, and learning; the existence and use of such an internal model is still under debate. A sensorimotor integration task was investigated in which participants estimated the location of one of their hands at the end of movements made in the dark and under externally imposed forces. The temporal propagation of errors in this task was analyzed within the theoretical framework of optimal state estimation. These results provide direct support for the existence of an internal model.

3,137 citations


"Transfer of the curvature aftereffe..." refers background in this paper

  • ...An accurate movement can be made when the efferent copy of the outgoing motor command is integrated with afferent sensory information (Flanagan, Bowman, & Johansson, 2006; Gritsenko, Krouchev, & Kalaska, 2007; Wolpert, Ghahramani, & Jordan, 1995 )....

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586 citations


"Transfer of the curvature aftereffe..." refers background in this paper

  • ...This finding is a considerable extension of the original discovery of Gibson (1933), sincewe employed a quantitative approach and displayed the existence of the effect for a relatively short adaptation time....

    [...]

  • ...Gibson (1933) reported that when subjects ran their fingers along the edge of a convexly curved cardboard for three minutes, the subsequently explored flat edge felt concave....

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TL;DR: The remarkable manipulative skill of the human hand is not the result of rapid sensorimotor processes, nor of fast or powerful effector mechanisms, Rather, the secret lies in the way manual tasks are organized and controlled by the nervous system.

430 citations


"Transfer of the curvature aftereffe..." refers background in this paper

  • ...Concerning the adaptation phase, it is not unlikely that both actively and passively acquired curvature information can cause a change in the movement planning during active testing, since information from different perceptual inputs can influence motor planning (see e.g., Flanagan et al., 2006; Goodwin & Wheat, 2004; Gordon, Forssberg, Johansson, & Westling, 1991)....

    [...]

  • ...An accurate movement can be made when the efferent copy of the outgoing motor command is integrated with afferent sensory information ( Flanagan, Bowman, & Johansson, 2006; Gritsenko, Krouchev, & Kalaska, 2007; Wolpert, Ghahramani, & Jordan, 1995)....

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01 Jan 1994
TL;DR: This chapter has attempted to bring together the laboratory and field-based techniques currently in use to assess workload, particularly as they are used with computer models of whole missions or operations.
Abstract: : This chapter has attempted to bring together the laboratory and field-based techniques currently in use to assess workload. No doubt, many specific procedures of interest to particular applications have been left out of this survey. In no sense is this meant to summarily exclude these from any list of valid workload assessment techniques. In fact, several of these are acknowledged to show considerable promise (e.g., occlusion techniques and respiratory rhythms). They are not discussed here partly because of space limitations and partly because a judgment had to be made concerning the practicality and general applicability of each measure. It is hoped that the inclusion of general references will serve to point the interested reader to the individual techniques not included here. Similarly, a class of techniques frequently used to assess workload was deliberately excluded from this chapter. Task analytic methods, particularly as they are used with computer models of whole missions or operations (see e.g., Lane, Strieb, Glenn, & Wherry, 1981) constitute an important tool for work- load investigations during design and other stages of aircraft and systems development. These techniques, however, are primarily off-line analyses that utilize the kind of laboratory and field data gathered with the techniques such as those described in this chapter. They provide an overall systems answer to the workload question and as such deserve separate treatment from highly specific workload measures. The interested reader is referred to Chubb (1981), Geer (1981), Lane et al. (1981), Parks (1979), and Wherry (1984) for reviews and introductions to some of the modeling techniques used in these areas. swr

314 citations

Book
02 Oct 1998
TL;DR: More than 200 papers have been published on motion aftereffect (MAE), largely inspired by improved techniques for examining brain electrophysiology and by emerging new theories of motion perception as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Motion perception lies at the heart of the scientific study of vision. The motion aftereffect (MAE), probably the best known phenomenon in the study of visual illusions, is the appearance of directional movement in a stationary object or scene after the viewer has been exposed to visual motion in the opposite direction. For example, after one has looked at a waterfall for a period of time, the scene beside the waterfall may appear to move upward when ones gaze is transferred to it. Although the phenomenon seems simple, research has revealed surprising complexities in the underlying mechanisms, and offered general lessons about how the brain processes visual information. In the last decade alone, more than 200 papers have been published on MAE, largely inspired by improved techniques for examining brain electrophysiology and by emerging new theories of motion perception. The contributors to this volume are all active researchers who have helped to shape the modern conception of MAE. Contributors: David Alais, Stuart Anstis, Patrick Cavanagh, Jody Culham, John Harris, Michelle Kwas, Timothy Ledgeway, George Mather, Bernard Moulden, Michael Niedeggen, Shin'ya Nishida, Allan Pantle, Robert Patterson, Jane Raymond, Michael Swanston, Peter Thompson, Frans Verstraten, Michael von Grunau, Nicolas Wade, Eugene Wist.

307 citations


"Transfer of the curvature aftereffe..." refers background in this paper

  • ...In vision, establishing aftereffect transfer has successfully uncovered the representation of perceived phenomena like motion (see e.g., Mather, Verstraten, & Anstis, 1998; Moulden, 1980; Tao, Lankheet, van de Grind, & van de Wezel, 2003; Wade, Swanston, & de Weert, 1993)....

    [...]

Frequently Asked Questions (2)
Q1. What contributions have the authors mentioned in the paper "Transfer of the curvature aftereffect in dynamic touch" ?

Van der Horst et al. this paper investigated the transfer of curvature aftereffect when curved surfaces were explored dynamically by a single finger. 

This finding raises interesting questions about the importance of self-induced movement in dynamic touch, which might be the subject of future studies.