Dataset Information

The role of visual processing on tactile suppression.

ABSTRACT: It has been suggested that tactile signals are suppressed on a moving limb to free capacities for processing other relevant sensory signals. In line with this notion, we recently showed that tactile suppression is indeed stronger in the presence of reach-relevant somatosensory signals. Here we examined whether this effect also generalizes to the processing of additional visual signals during reaching. Brief vibrotactile stimuli were presented on the participants' right index finger either during right-hand reaching to a previously illuminated target LED, or during rest. Participants had to indicate whether they detected the vibrotactile stimulus or not. The target LED remained off (tactile), or was briefly illuminated (tactile & vis) during reaching, providing additional reach-relevant visual information about the target position. If tactile suppression frees capacities for reach-relevant visual information, suppression should be stronger in the tactile & vis compared to the tactile condition. In an additional visual-discrimination condition (tactile & visDis), the target LED flashed once or twice during reaching and participants had to also report the number of flashes. If tactile suppression occurs to free additional capacities for perception-relevant visual signals, tactile suppression should be even stronger in the tactile & visDis compared to the tactile & vis condition. We found that additional visual signals improved reach endpoint accuracy and precision. In all conditions, reaching led to tactile suppression as indicated by higher detection thresholds compared to rest, confirming previous findings. However, tactile suppression was comparable between conditions arguing against the hypothesis that it frees capacities for processing other relevant visual signals.

SUBMITTER: Gertz H

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5884567 | biostudies-other | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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The role of visual processing on tactile suppression.

Gertz Hanna H Fiehler Katja K Voudouris Dimitris D

PloS one 20180404 4

It has been suggested that tactile signals are suppressed on a moving limb to free capacities for processing other relevant sensory signals. In line with this notion, we recently showed that tactile suppression is indeed stronger in the presence of reach-relevant somatosensory signals. Here we examined whether this effect also generalizes to the processing of additional visual signals during reaching. Brief vibrotactile stimuli were presented on the participants' right index finger either during ...[more]

PMID: 29617416

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Project description:Tactile stimuli on moving limbs are typically attenuated during reach planning and execution. This phenomenon has been related to internal forward models that predict the sensory consequences of a movement. Tactile suppression is considered to occur due to a match between the actual and predicted sensory consequences of a movement, which might free capacities to process novel or task-relevant sensory signals. Here, we examined whether and how tactile suppression depends on the relevance of somatosensory information for reaching. Participants reached with their left or right index finger to the unseen index finger of their other hand (body target) or an unseen pad on a screen (external target). In the body target condition, somatosensory signals from the static hand were available for localizing the reach target. Vibrotactile stimuli were presented on the moving index finger before or during reaching or in a separate no-movement baseline block, and participants indicated whether they detected a stimulus. As expected, detection thresholds before or during reaching were higher compared with baseline. Tactile suppression was also stronger for reaches to body targets than external targets, as reflected by higher detection thresholds and lower precision of detectability. Moreover, detection thresholds were higher when reaching with the left than with the right hand. Our results suggest that tactile suppression is modulated by position signals from the target limb that are required to reach successfully to the own body. Moreover, limb dominance seems to affect tactile suppression, presumably due to disparate uncertainty of feedback signals from the moving limb.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Tactile suppression on a moving limb has been suggested to release computational resources for processing other relevant sensory events. In the current study, we show that tactile sensitivity on the moving limb decreases more when reaching to body targets than external targets. This indicates that tactile perception can be modulated by allocating processing capacities to movement-relevant somatosensory information at the target location. Our results contribute to understanding tactile processing and predictive mechanisms in the brain.

Dataset Information

The role of visual processing on tactile suppression.

Publications

The role of visual processing on tactile suppression.

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