Scientists have detailed how the activity of tactile neurons in the fingertip in response to an applied force is influenced by the fingertip's mechanical memory of previous forces.
Reviewed Preprint, provides what the editors call fundamental findings on how the fingertip's viscoelasticity—its time-dependent mechanical response to an appliedThe findings emphasize that these neurons not only signal current fingertip force but also the fingertip's viscoelastic memory of previous loadings. Tactile information about the recent physical state of the skin may help the brain to formulate accurate motor commands to control the hands in object manipulation and haptic tasks.
To investigate this, Saal and colleagues examined how previous fingertip forces affected the responses of first-order tactile neurons when new forces were applied. They used a custom-built robot to stimulate the fingertip with forces that mimicked those typically encountered during natural object interaction.
First, they noted that varying the loading history resulted in greater variation in fingertip deformation, confirming the viscoelastic memory of the fingertip. Then, they examined whether this increased variability in deformation was mirrored in the responses of the neurons.
Intriguingly, they also observed considerable diversity in the behavior of individual neurons within each type: while some neurons primarily signaled information about the current force direction, others signaled both the current and previous direction, and some primarily the preceding direction.
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