Table Of ContentScholarpedia
Series Editor: Eugene Izhikevich
Tony J. Prescott
Ehud Ahissar
Eugene Izhikevich Editors
Scholarpedia
of Touch
Scholarpedia
Series editor
Eugene Izhikevich, San Diego, USA
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13574
Tony J. Prescott Ehud Ahissar
(cid:129)
Eugene Izhikevich
Editors
Scholarpedia of Touch
Editors
TonyJ. Prescott Eugene Izhikevich
Department ofPsychology BrainCorporation
University of Sheffield SanDiego, CA
Sheffield USA
UK
EhudAhissar
Department ofNeurobiology
WeizmannInstitute ofScience
Rehovot
Israel
Scholarpedia
ISBN978-94-6239-132-1 ISBN978-94-6239-133-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.2991/978-94-6239-133-8
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©AtlantisPressandtheauthor(s)2016
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Preface
Touch is the ability to understand the world through physical contact. The noun
“touch”andtheverb“totouch” derive from theOldFrench verb“tochier”.Touch
perception is also described by the adjectives tactile, from the Latin “tactilis”, and
haptic, from the Greek “haptόs”. Academic research concerned with touch is also
often described as haptics.
The aim of Scholarpedia of Touch, first published by Scholarpedia (www.
scholarpedia.org), is to provide a comprehensive set of articles, written by leading
researchers and peer reviewed by fellow scientists, detailing the current scientific
understandingofthesenseoftouchandofitsneuralsubstratesinanimalsincluding
humans. It is hoped that the encyclopedia will encourage sharing of ideas and
insights between researchers working on different aspects of touch in different
species, including research in synthetic touch systems. In addition, it is hoped that
theencyclopediawillraiseawarenessaboutresearchintactilesensingandpromote
increased scientific and public interest in the field.
Our encyclopedia assembles a state-of-the-art understanding of the sense of
touch across a broad range of species from invertebrates such as stick insects and
spiders, terrestrial and marine mammals, through to humans. The different contri-
butions show not only the varieties of touch—antennae, whiskers, fingertips—but
also theircommonalities. Theyexplore how touch sensinghasevolved indifferent
animal lineages, how it serves to provide rapid and reliable cues for controlling
ongoing behaviour, how it develops, and how it can disintegrate when our brains
begin to fail. In addition to analysing natural touch, we also consider how engi-
neeringisbeginningtoexploitphysicalanaloguesofthesebiologicalsystemssoas
to endow robots, and other engineered artefacts, with rich tactile sensing
capabilities.
v
vi Preface
Scope and Structure
Following an introductory chapter—The World of Touch—our encyclopedia is
structured into four parts:
(cid:129) Comparative Touch There are a large number of specialist tactile sensory
organsintheanimalkingdom.Thispartcontainsarticlesonanimalspeciesthat
exhibit interesting or exceptional tactile sensing abilities. We particularly focus
on antennal systems in insects, and on vibrissal systems in both terrestrial and
marine mammals.
(cid:129) ThePsychologyofTouchThestudyofhumancutaneoustouchhasarichand
long history in psychology and psychophysics. The pioneering studies of Ernst
Weber (1795–1878) distinguished different forms of touch—pressure, temper-
ature, and pain—all of which are separately considered in our encyclopedia
along with dynamical (effortful) touch, tactile perception offorce, and relevant
forms of interoception (internal sensing) and proprioception (sense of body
position). A particular focus of recent research has been towards the combina-
tion of tactile sensing with manipulation and grasp in the human hand.
Alongsidethestudyofhealthytouch,thispartalsoconsidersresearchontouch
disorders, loss of tactile acuity with ageing, and the phenomenon of phantom
touch.
(cid:129) The Neuroscience of Touch A scientific understanding of the biological sub-
strates for tactile sensing is beginning to emerge at all levels from the sensory
peripherythroughtothesomatosensoryandmultimodalareasofcortex.Perhaps
more than anyother sensorymodality,tactile sensing iscritically dependenton
the movement of the sensing apparatus, therefore touch is increasingly studied
from an active perception perspective—understanding active touch (in contrast
to passive touch) as an intentional, information-seeking activity that combines
sensing with actuation. The investigation of the sensorimotor control loops
involved in mammalian active touch has been significantly advanced by the
availabilityoftherodentvibrissalsensorysystemasananimalmodel.Thispart
therefore combines studies in both primates (including humans) and rodents to
show how neurobiological research is beginning to demonstrate an in-depth
understanding of tactile sensing systems in mammals.
(cid:129) Synthetic Touch Touch sensing is giving rise to a range of exciting new
technologies.Thisparthighlightssomeofthemostpromisingtactilesensorsfor
robots and haptic displays for the visually-impaired, through to virtual touch
systems that can allow the extension of touch, through telecommunication
technologies, as a modality for communication.
Tony J. Prescott
Ehud Ahissar
Eugene Izhikevich
Acknowledgments
The Scholarpedia of Touch was sponsored in part by the European Union
Framework 7 project BIOTACT (BIOmimetic Technology for vibrissal ACtive
Touch) (FP7-ICT-215910), one of whose goals was to promote research in the
fields of natural and synthetic tactile sensing. Tony J. Prescott’s contribution to
editing the Encyclopaedia was also assisted by support from the Framework 7
Co-ordination Action “The Convergent Science Network of Biomimetics and
Neurotechnology” (FP7-ICT-601167). The collaboration among the editors was
facilitated by support from a Weizmann-UK grant from the Weizmann Institute of
Science.
All articles of this volume first appeared in Scholarpedia—the peer-reviewed
open-accessencyclopedia.Theyallarefreelyavailableathttp://www.scholarpedia.
org, and the readers are encouraged to revise and edit these articles to keep them
up-to-date, similarly to how it is done in Wikipedia—the free encyclopedia.
However,suchrevisionsandeditsarenotpublisheduntiltheyareapprovedbythe
articles’ curators.
The following Scholarpedia Assistants provided substantial assistance to the
specified chapters:
Swetamber Das (Tactile Temporal Order, Imaging Human Touch, Whisking
Control by Motor Cortex), Javier Elkin (Touch in Aging), Serguei A. Mokhov
(ModelsofTactilePerceptionandDevelopment,SystemsNeuroscienceofTouch),
Shruti Muralidhar (S1 Microcircuits, Tactile Object Perception), Abdellatif Nemri
(DynamicTouch),B.LungsiSharma(ASpider’sTactileHairs),andJuzarThingna
(Tactile Substitution for Vision, Whisking Pattern Generation).
Additionally, Nick Orbeck provided copy-editing for most of the articles, and
Michelle Jones collated and edited the proof corrections.
vii
Contents
Introduction: The World of Touch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Tony J. Prescott and Volker Dürr
Part I Comparative Touch
Cockroach Antennae. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Jiro Okada
Stick Insect Antennae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Volker Dürr
A Spider’s Tactile Hairs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Friedrich G. Barth
Tactile Sensing in the Octopus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Frank Grasso and Martin Wells
Tactile Sensing in the Naked Mole Rat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Christine M. Crish, Samuel D. Crish and Christopher Comer
Vibrissal Behavior and Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Tony J. Prescott, Ben Mitchinson and Robyn A. Grant
Vibrissal Touch in the Etruscan Shrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Claudia Roth-Alpermann and Michael Brecht
Vibrissal Touch in Pinnipeds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Wolf Hanke and Guido Dehnhardt
Tactile Hair in Manatees. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Roger Reep and Diana K. Sarko
ix
x Contents
Part II The Psychology of Touch
Active Tactile Perception. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Nathan Lepora
Tactile Object Perception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Guy Nelinger, Eldad Assa and Ehud Ahissar
Haptic Exploration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Roberta Klatzky and Catherine L. Reed
Haptic Saliency. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Astrid M.L. Kappers and Wouter M. Bergmann Tiest
Shape from Touch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Astrid M.L. Kappers and Wouter M. Bergmann Tiest
Texture from Touch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Sliman Bensmaia
Haptic Perception of Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Wouter M. Bergmann Tiest and Astrid M.L. Kappers
Dynamic (Effortful) Touch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Claudia Carello and Michael Turvey
Observed Touch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Jamie Ward
Painful Touch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
Stuart Derbyshire
Thermal Touch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Lynette Jones
Tactile Control of Balance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Leif Johannsen, Alan Wing and Mark S. Redfern
Tactile Temporal Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
Shinya Yamamoto and Shigeru Kitazawa
Tactile Suppression. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
C. Elaine Chapman and François Tremblay
Crossmodal and Multisensory Interactions Between Vision
and Touch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
Simon Lacey and K. Sathian
Aftereffects in Touch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
Astrid M.L. Kappers and Wouter M. Bergmann Tiest
