Intermanual and intramanual tactual grating discrimination

Abstract

For intermanual tactual discrimination to occur, it is thought that neural signals have to cross the corpus callosum in some way at least once. In this note we address the question of whether this interhemispheric transfer affects grating discrimination in active touch. Eight right-handed participants made intermanual and intramanual tactual discriminations of sinusoidal gratings that had slightly different spatial periods. Intramanual discrimination included comparisons in which the gratings were felt with the same finger, as well as comparisons made with two different fingers of the same hand. During intermanual discrimination the gratings were felt with corresponding fingers or with non-corresponding fingers of different hands. We found that thresholds for intramanual conditions were lower than for intermanual conditions in active dynamic touch. This suggests that there is a component of the task that is unilateral, as might be mediated by a somatosensory region that has predominantly or exclusively contralateral receptive fields.