Tactile Distance Anisotropy on the feet

Manser-Smith, Kelda and Tame, Luigi and Longo, Matthew (2021) Tactile Distance Anisotropy on the feet. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 83 , pp. 3227-3239. ISSN 1943-3921.

Abstract

Perception of distance between two touches varies with orientation on the hand, with distances aligned with hand width perceived as larger than those aligned with hand length. Similar anisotropies are found on other body parts (e.g., the face), suggesting they may reflect a general feature of tactile organization, but appear absent on other body parts (e.g., the belly). Here, we investigated tactile distance anisotropy on the foot, a body part structurally and embryologically similar to the hand, but with very different patterns of functional usage in humans. In three experiments, we compared the perceived distance between pairs of touches aligned with the medio-lateral and proximal-distal foot axes. On the hairy skin of the foot dorsum, anisotropy was consistently found, with distances aligned with the medio-lateral foot axis perceived as larger than those in the proximo-distal axis. In contrast, on the glabrous skin of the sole, inconsistent results were found across experiments, with no overall evidence for anisotropy. This shows a pattern of anisotropy on the foot broadly similar to the hand, adding to the list of body parts showing tactile distance anisotropy, and providing further evidence that such biases are a general aspect of tactile spatial organization across the body.

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