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Perceived roughness as a function of body locus.

J C Stevens1

  • 1John B. Pierce Foundation Laboratory, New Haven, CT 06519.

Perception & Psychophysics
|March 1, 1990
PubMed
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Human perception of surface roughness varies significantly across different body locations. Sensitivity is highest on the lips and fingers, and lowest on the thigh and back.

Area of Science:

  • * Neuroscience
  • * Sensory Physiology
  • * Human Perception

Background:

  • * The perception of texture and roughness is a complex tactile sensation.
  • * Previous research suggests a power function relationship between physical properties of a surface and perceived roughness.
  • * The influence of body location on tactile perception of roughness is not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

  • * To investigate how perceived roughness of grooved metallic surfaces varies across ten different body loci.
  • * To determine if the relationship between groove width and perceived roughness is consistent across all body locations.
  • * To compare the rank order of body loci for roughness sensitivity with other known tactile sensitivities.

Main Methods:

  • * Twenty human subjects participated in the study.

Related Experiment Videos

  • * Magnitude estimations of surface roughness were collected for grooved metallic surfaces.
  • * Stimuli were applied to ten distinct body loci.

    • Main Results:

    • * Perceived roughness generally increased as a power function of groove width.
    • * The exponents and intercepts of this power function were strongly dependent on the body locus.
    • * Roughness sensitivity was highest on the lips, fingers, and forearm, and lowest on the heel, back, and thigh.
    • * Differences in sensitivity among body loci became more pronounced with increasing groove width.

    Conclusions:

    • * The human somatosensory system exhibits significant spatial variation in its sensitivity to surface roughness.
    • * The pattern of roughness sensitivity across body loci parallels that of punctate pressure sensitivity.
    • * This spatial variation in tactile perception has implications for understanding sensory coding and neural representation.