Signatures of vibration frequency tuning in human neocortex

Abstract

The spectral content of vibrations produced in the skin conveys essential information about textures and underlies sensing through hand-held tools. Humans can perceive and discriminate vibration frequency, yet the central representation of this fundamental feature is unknown. Using fMRI, we discovered that cortical responses are tuned for vibration frequency. Voxel tuning was biased in a manner that reflects perceptual sensitivity and the response profile of the Pacinian afferent system. These results imply the existence of tuned populations that may encode naturalistic vibrations according to their constituent spectra.