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Touch 2: Perception, Pain and Plasticity. Outline. Perception How we perceive texture, vibration, details Central Processing Receptive field properties in cortex Effects of attention on touch processing Pain Gate control theory Pain and cognition Plasticity
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Outline • Perception • How we perceive texture, vibration, details • Central Processing • Receptive field properties in cortex • Effects of attention on touch processing • Pain • Gate control theory • Pain and cognition • Plasticity • Sensory experience and cortical organization • Phantom limbs PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Perception PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Fine details • Braille readers can read 100 words per minute • Which population of mechanoreceptors is useful for resolving fine spatial details like these braille patterns? PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Fine details • Merkel disks (SA1 fibers) signal fine spatial details PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Fine details • Areas of skin more sensitive to fine detail have denser innervation of Merkel receptors PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Measuring tactile acuity • What is one confound with the two-point threshold as a means of studying tactile acuity? PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Measuring tactile acuity • Thresholds for discriminating grating orientation are more controlled way of measuring tactile acuity PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Vibration • Several mechanoreceptor types respond to vibratory stimuli • Put vibrating probe on hand and measure smallest vibration which can be detected by people and by sensory receptors PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Vibration • Different receptor types are sensitive to different frequencies • Perception follows the most sensitive receptors • Lower envelope principle PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Romo paper • Which types of neurons did Romo et al. find important for discriminating vibratory frequencies near 20 Hz? • Which kinds of neurons were ineffective? PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Texture • Spatial and temporal cues are important • Temporal cues important when you actively scan fingers across surface PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Mechanoreceptors and texture • Selective adaptation experiment • Pre-adapted to low-frequencies to reduce Meissner corpuscle responses (RA1) before fine texture discrimination test • Pre-adapted to high frequencies to reduce Pacinian corpuscle responses (PC) PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Feeling roughness with a pen • You can determine the texture of a stimulus just by running a pen over it, i.e. without touching it • Which receptor types might be useful for this? PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Central Processing PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Perception and central processing PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Sensory processing • Mechanoreceptor neurons have simple receptive fields • Increase firing rate with stimulation • Neurons in thalamus have center-surround receptive fields • Excited by stimuli in RF center, inhibited by surrounding stimuli PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Generation of receptive fields convergent excitation surround inhibition lateral inhibition PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Lateral inhibition improves perceptual discrimination PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Cortical neurons • In the cortex, many neurons have complex feature sensitivity • Selective for oriented bars or movement in a given direction PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Attention • Neural responses cortex are modulated by attention • Monkey trained on both visual and tactile task while recording from S1 and S2 • Find some neurons respond more when monkey is paying attention to touch stimuli PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Pain PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Nociceptors • Bare nerve endings in skin sensitive to harmful stimuli • Pressure, burns, chemicals, etc… PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Pain is a subjective phenomenon • Responses to noxious stimuli modified by variety of factors • anticipation • prior experience • watching others • excitement • Soldiers in battle often do not feel pain until after the battle PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Gate-control theory • Top-down signals from brain can block bottom-up signals from nociceptors by modulating the response of spinal cord neurons PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Opiates • Body produces endogenous opiates which act in spinal cord to suppress pain – soldier in battle • Inhibit synaptic transmission in spinal cord pain pathways • Chemically similar to morphine, heroin, etc… PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
More analgesia • Benign stimulation (rubbing skin) near site of injury also reduces pain PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Pain and cognition • Areas S1 and S2 represent the sensory aspects of pain, emotional aspects in anterior cingluatecortex • Hypnosis experiment – subjects put hands in same water, but those who were told it was worse had more activity in AC cortex, but not S1 or S2. PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Pain and cognition • Subjects put hand in cold water while being shown pleasant and unpleasant pictures • Could keep hand in longer when looking at pleasant pictures PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Pain and cognition • Women received shocks or their male partner received shocks • Activity in same brain regions (anterior cingulate, insular cortex) whether receiving shocks or watching shocks • More empathetic women had more brain activity PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
I feel your pain PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Plasticity PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Body is mapped on cortex • Maps are not static but change with experience PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Maps change with experience • Monkey trained on task using his fingertip to make a discrimination • After several months, the cortical representation of that fingertip had expanded tremendously PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Violin players • Brain imaging experiments show more cortical area for hand which fingers the violin strings than the hand which holds the bow PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Digit fusion • Monkeys had two digits fused together • Region of cortex between digits responded to both digit • Multi-digit receptive fields PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Digit amputation • Removed input from glabrous skin of D1, D2 • Immediately afterward saw responses to dorsal skin • Eventually also saw responses to digit D3 PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College
Phantom limbs PSY 295 - Fall 2012 - Grinnell College