Interaction of spatial and temporal summation in the warmth sense

Abstract

Two experiments explored the interaction of spatial and temporal summation in the perception of radiant heat. The first experiment showed that the absolute threshold for detecting two brief (0.1 sec) pulses of heat, one presented to each side of the forehead, is lower than the threshold for detecting a single pulse, even when the two pulses are separated in time by as muchas 0l75 sec. The second experiment showed that a single, 4-sec pulse of heat presented to one side of the forehead feels no warmer than two successive, 2-sec pulses, one to each side. Spatial and temporal summation appear to take place at least partly in the central nervous system.