How visuomotor predictability and task demands affect tactile sensitivity on a moving limb during object interaction in a virtual environment

Autor: Meaghan McManus, Immo Schütz, Dimitris Voudouris, Katja Fiehler
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2023
Předmět:
Zdroj: Royal Society Open Science, Vol 10, Iss 12 (2023)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2054-5703
DOI: 10.1098/rsos.231259
Popis: Tactile sensitivity is decreased on a moving limb compared to the same static limb. This tactile suppression likely reflects an interplay between sensorimotor predictions and sensory feedback. Here, we examined how visuomotor predictability influences tactile suppression. Participants were instructed to hit an approaching virtual object, with the object either never rotating, or always rotating, or rotating unpredictably, prompting related movement adjustments. We probed tactile suppression by delivering a vibrotactile stimulus of varying intensities to the moving hand briefly after the object's rotation and asked participants to indicate if they had felt a vibration. We hypothesized that Unpredictable Rotations would require upweighting of somatosensory feedback from the hand and therefore decrease suppression. Instead, we found stronger suppression with unpredictable than Predictable Rotations. This finding persisted even when visual input from the moving hand was removed and participants had to rely solely on somatosensory feedback of their hand. Importantly, we found a correlation between task demand and tactile suppression in both experiments, indicating that task load can amplify tactile suppression, possibly by downweighting task-irrelevant somatosensory feedback signals to allow for successful task performance when visuomotor task demands are high.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals