Tactile Discrimination of Gaps by Slowly Adapting Afferents: Effects of Population Parameters and Anisotropy in the Fingerpad

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine the acuity of the peripheral tactile system for gaps and to determine how stimulus orientation may impact on this. We quantified the ability of humans to discriminate small differences in gap width using a forced-choice task. Stimuli were presented passively to the distal fingerpad in a region where the skin ridges all run approximately in the same direction. Two standard gap widths were used (2 and 2.9 mm), and the comparison gap widths were larger than the standard gaps. With the gap axis parallel to the skin ridges, the average difference limen was approximately 0.2 mm for both standards. We examined the effect of stimulus orientation by asking subjects to discriminate between a smooth surface and a grating (ridge width, 1.5 mm; groove width, 0.75 mm). They were able to discriminate the two surfaces when the axis of the grooves was parallel to the skin ridges, but performance was below threshold in the orthogonal orientation. The underlying neural mechanisms were investigated using the gap stimuli to activate single slowly adapting type I mechanoreceptive afferents (SAIs) innervating the fingerpads of anesthetized monkeys. The edges of the gap produced response peaks, and the gap resulted in a trough in the receptive field profiles. The response magnitude at the peaks was greater, and at the troughs was smaller, for larger gap widths and also when the axis of the gap was parallel to the skin ridges as compared with the orthogonal orientation. Simulated SAI population responses showed that response profiles were distorted by variation in afferent sensitivity and by neural noise. Using signal detection theory, based on a neural measure of the gaps computed over the active population, the acuity of the SAIs under realistic population conditions was compared with human performance. These analyses showed how parameters like afferent sensitivity, the pattern and density of innervation, and noise impact on performance and why their impact is different for the two stimulus orientations investigated. The greatest limitation was imposed by noise that is independent of response magnitude, and this effect was greater for stimuli oriented orthogonal to the skin ridges than for the parallel orientation.