Peripheral neural representation of spatial dimensions of a textured surface moving across the monkey's finger pad

1. The responses of single cutaneous mechanoreceptive fibres evoked by a geometrically patterned surface sweeping across the skin were examined. The surfaces used were each a fine diamond-shaped array of "dots' in relief against a flat background. The fibres examined were rapidly adapting, slowly adapting and Pacinian fibres innervating the monkey's finger pad skin. 2. Each fibre's response to the two-dimensioned surface was assessed using a procedure in which the surface was swept across the fibre's receptive field many times, the position of the surface relative to the underlying receptive field being precisely known at any instant in time. Between each successive sweep the stimulus surface was shifted lateral to the direction of movement by a small increment. The response pattern generated by this scanning procedure specified the extent to which a single response of the fibre was dependent on the spatial and temporal dimensions of the stimulus. 3. The invariant spatial features of the moving surface were represented only in the responses of populations of fibres; responses of the constituent fibres always confounded the information relayed about the surface pattern and its rate of movement across the skin. 4. Factors determining the representation of the spatial and temporal characteristics of the moving surface in the responding mechanoreceptive fibre population were examined. These included the response characteristics of the constituent fibres, the innervation density, and the total number of fibres engaged by the moving surface.