Tilt adaptation aftereffects reveal fundamental perceptual characteristics of tactile orientation processing on the hand

Hidaka, S. and Tucciarelli, Raffaele and Azañón, Elena and Longo, Matthew (2022) Tilt adaptation aftereffects reveal fundamental perceptual characteristics of tactile orientation processing on the hand. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 48 (12), pp. 1427-1438. ISSN 0096-1523.

Abstract

Orientation information contributes substantially to our tactile perception such as feeling an object’s shape on the skin. For vision, a perceptual adaptation aftereffect (tilt aftereffect; TAE), which is well explained by neural orientation selectivity, has been used to reveal fundamental perceptual properties of orientation processing. Neural orientation selectivity has been reported in somatosensory cortices. However, little research has investigated the perceptual characteristics of the tactile TAE. The aim of the current study was to provide the first demonstration of a tactile TAE on the hand and investigate the perceptual nature of tactile TAE on the hand surface. We used a two-point stimulation with minimal input for orientation. We found clear TAEs on the hand surface: Adaptation induced shifts in subjective vertical sensation toward the orientation opposite to the adapted one. Further, adaptation aftereffects were purely based on orientation processing given that the effects transferred between different lengths across adaptor and test stimuli and type of stimuli. Finally, adaptation aftereffects were anchored to the hand: tactile TAE occurred independently of hand rotation and transferred from palm to dorsum sides of the hand, while the effects did not transfer between hands. Our findings demonstrate the existence of hand-centered perceptual processing for basic tactile orientation information.

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