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The Representation of Stimulus Orientation in the Early Stages of Somatosensory Processing
Open accessAbstract
At an early stage of processing, a stimulus is represented as a set of contours. In the representation of form, a critical feature of these local contours is their orientation. In the present study, we investigate the representation of orientation at the somatosensory periphery and in primary somatosensory cortex. We record the responses of mechanoreceptive afferents and of neurons in areas 3b and 1 to oriented bars and edges using a variety of stimulus conditions. We find that orientation is not explicitly represented in the responses of single afferents, but a large proportion of orientation detectors (approximately 50%) can be found in areas 3b and 1. Many neurons in both areas exhibit orientation tuning that is preserved across modes of stimulus presentation (scanned vs indented) and is relatively insensitive to other stimulus parameters, such as amplitude and speed, and to the nature of the stimulus, bar or edge. Orientation-selective neurons tend to be more SA (slowly adapting)-like than RA (rapidly adapting)-like, and the strength of the orientation signal is strongest during the sustained portion of the response to a statically indented bar. The most orientation-selective neurons in SI are comparable in sensitivity with that measured in humans. Finally, responses of SI neurons to bars and edges can be modeled with a high degree of accuracy using Gaussian or Gabor filters. The similarity in the representations of orientation in the visual and somatosensory systems suggests that analogous neural mechanisms mediate early visual and tactile form processing.
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“Not only are the visual and cutaneous representations of shape analogous in the periphery, they are also analogous in cortex, both involving the decomposition of shape into a set of oriented contours (Bensmaia et al., 2008), then extracting increasingly complex stimulus features, such as curvature (Yau et al., 2013;2009).”
From Biomimetic approaches to bionic touch through a peripheral nerve interface (2015) · cites this paper as Bensmaia et al., 2008
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Metadata
- Authors
- Bensmaia, S. J., Denchev, P. V., Dammann, J. F., Craig, J. C., & Hsiao, S. S.
- Affiliations
- Johns Hopkins University (US)
- Indiana University Bloomington (US)
- ORCID
- Craig, James C.
- Venue
- The Journal of Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Society for Neuroscience
- Published
- 2008-01-16
- Volume
- 28
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 776-786
- ISSN
- 0270-6474 (ISSN-L)
- 1529-2401
- PMC
- PMC6670339
- OpenAlex
- W2119454234
- Cited by
- 162
- References
- 29
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 8 · 2015: 14 · 2014: 16 · 2013: 12 · 2012: 8
- FWCI
- 2.93
- 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
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (R01DC000095, DC-00095)
- National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R01NS034086, NS 34086, NS-18787, R01NS018787)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Tactile and Sensory Interactions
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Multisensory perception and integration
- Keywords
- orientation representation, somatosensory processing, primary somatosensory cortex, area 3b, area 1, orientation tuning, slowly adapting afferents, rapidly adapting afferents, Gabor filters, contour orientation, single neuron responses
- MeSH terms
- Action Potentials, Afferent Pathways, Animals, Brain Mapping, Form Perception, General Adaptation Syndrome, Macaca mulatta, Models, Neurological, Neurons, Orientation, Physical Stimulation, Psychophysics, Somatosensory Cortex, Time Factors, Touch, Normal Distribution
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