Unveiling interactions of spatial-temporal information in tactile motion perception

Tactile perception is inherently dynamic, relying on active manual exploration to extract information about motion and surface properties. Spatiotemporal inputs facilitate tactile motion perception by conveying information both direction and speed perception. Although previous studies have examined these features separately, the interactions between spatial and temporal features in shaping perceptual outcomes remain poorly understood. To address this gap, we conducted two psychophysical experiments in which tactile motion stimuli, varying in direction, speed and spatial frequency (wavelength), were delivered to the distal fingerpad of healthy participants, and then requested the participants to report their feedback directly. In Experiment I, we found that the anisotropic distortion of directional perceptual bias is quadrant-dependent, while variations in speed did not alter this general pattern. Experiment II revealed a dissociation between spatial and temporal contributions to perception. Spatial frequency primarily determined the overall pattern of perceptual bias, reflecting the structural properties of the stimulus. In contrast, speed modulates its dynamic expression by influencing the amplitude and phase of deviations. Additional psychometric function analyses indicated that tactile speed perception arises from a combination of linear and nonlinear processes. Collectively, these findings elucidate how the brain integrates spatiotemporal cues to construct a coherent tactile motion representation, thereby accounting for the systematic directional distortions and nonlinear speed estimation.