Slowly Adapting Mechanoreceptors in the Borders of the Human Fingernail Encode Fingertip Forces
Open accessAbstract
There are clusters of slowly adapting (SA) mechanoreceptors in the skin folds bordering the nail. These “SA-IInail” afferents, which constitute nearly one fifth of the tactile afferents innervating the fingertip, possess the general discharge characteristics of slowly adapting type II (SA-II) tactile afferents located elsewhere in the glabrous skin of the human hand. Little is known about the signals in the SA-IInail afferents when the fingertips interact with objects. Here we show that SA-IInail afferents reliably respond to fingertip forces comparable to those arising in everyday manipulations. Using a flat stimulus surface, we applied forces to the finger pad while recording impulse activity in 17 SA-IInail afferents. Ramp-and-hold forces (amplitude 4 N, rate 10 N/s) were applied normal to the skin, and at 10, 20, or 30° from the normal in eight radial directions with reference to the primary site of contact (25 force directions in total). All afferents responded to the force stimuli, and the responsiveness of all but one afferents was broadly tuned to a preferred direction of force. The preferred directions among afferents were distributed all around the angular space, suggesting that the population of SA-IInail afferents could encode force direction. We conclude that signals in the population of SA-IInail afferents terminating in the nail walls contain vectorial information about fingertip forces. The particular tactile features of contacted surfaces would less influence force-related signals in SA-IInail afferents than force-related signals present in afferents terminating in the volar skin areas that directly contact objects.
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There is some evidence for increased SAII density at the skin/nail border on the fingertips.
“However, there is some evidence for increased density at the skin/nail border on the fingertips (Birznieks et al. 2009;Johansson and Vallbo 1979).”
From Tactile innervation densities across the whole body (2020) · cites this paper as Birznieks et al. 2009
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- Authors
- Birznieks, I., Macefield, V. G., Westling, G., & Johansson, R. S.
- Affiliations
- Neuroscience Research Australia (AU)
- Western Sydney University (AU)
- Umeå University (SE)
- Venue
- The Journal of Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Society for Neuroscience
- Published
- 2009-07-22
- Volume
- 29
- Issue
- 29
- Pages
- 9370-9379
- ISSN
- 0270-6474 (ISSN-L)
- 1529-2401
- PMC
- PMC6665555
- OpenAlex
- W2103241293
- Cited by
- 97
- References
- 48
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 5 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 1.62
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- David and Elaine Potter Foundation
- European Commission
- Ian Potter Foundation
- Vetenskapsrådet (08667)
- Medical Research Council
- National Health and Medical Research Council
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Tactile and Sensory Interactions
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Motor Control and Adaptation
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Sensory Systems › Ion Channels and Receptors
- Keywords
- slowly adapting mechanoreceptors, fingertip force, tactile afferents, fingertip touch
- MeSH terms
- Action Potentials, Adult, Analysis of Variance, Female, Fingers, Humans, Male, Mechanoreceptors, Microelectrodes, Nails, Physical Stimulation, Linear Models, Young Adult
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
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