Tactile and Sensory Interactions

Hierarchical processing underpins competition in tactile perceptual bistability

The paper presents a computational model of tactile perceptual bistability that incorporates hierarchical processing and captures key dynamical features of perceptual alternations.

Impact of blindness onset on the representation of sound categories in occipital and temporal cortices

This study examines how blindness onset affects sound category representation in occipital and temporal cortices, finding enhanced and stable coding in occipital regions and a reverse pattern in temporal regions in blind individuals.

Follicle-innervating Aδ-low threshold mechanoreceptors organize through a population-dependent mechanism

The paper shows that Aδ-low threshold mechanoreceptors form tiled receptive fields through competition for hair follicles during early postnatal development.

Statistical characterization of tactile scenes in three-dimensional environments reveals filter properties of somatosensory cortical neurons

The paper quantifies natural tactile scene statistics using 3D object scans and shows they resemble visual image statistics, with neural models capturing primate somatosensory cortex responses.

A measure of the somatosensory blink reflex to parametric variation of mechanical stimulation

This study develops a parametric model linking trigeminal nerve stimulation intensity to blink response properties, finding a laterality effect in half-response thresholds.

Crossmodal reorganization in deaf auditory cortices compensates for the impaired body-centered visuomotor transformation after early deafness

This study shows that early deafness leads to cross-modal reorganization in auditory cortices, which functionally couples with frontoparietal and default-mode networks, affecting visuomotor transformation performance.

The impact of C-Tactile Low threshold mechanoreceptors on affective touch and social interactions in mice.

This study shows that C-LTMRs in mice influence social behavior and affective touch, with their dysfunction leading to social isolation and increased excitability promoting pro-social interactions.

Columnar scale lesions in barrel cortex degrade tactile discrimination but not detection

The paper shows that columnar scale lesions in mouse vS1 impair tactile discrimination but not detection.

Tactile attention modulates occipital alpha oscillations in early blindness

The paper investigates whether alpha oscillations in early blind individuals are modulated by tactile attention, finding that occipital alpha activity is sensitive to task-dependent factors despite reduced amplitude.

Sensory experience modulates the reorganisation of temporal auditory regions for executive processing

This study shows that early deafness leads to recruitment of auditory brain regions for executive tasks like task switching in adults.

Neural mechanisms for the localization of externally generated tactile motion

The paper identifies a neural mechanism in the mouse superior colliculus that distinguishes external from self-generated tactile motion using whisker-specific adaptation and sensorimotor predictions.

Mapping the integration of sensory information across fingers in human sensorimotor cortex

This study uses fMRI to show non-linear interactions between fingers in human S1 and M1, revealing how sensory inputs are integrated for dexterous manipulation.

The role of visual experience in brain inter-individual variability

This study shows that congenital blindness leads to more variable resting-state functional connectivity in visual cortex compared to sighted individuals, highlighting the impact of sensory experience on brain organization.

Brain morphometric changes in congenitally blind subjects: a 7 Tesla MRI study

This study uses 7 Tesla MRI to find structural brain reductions in congenitally blind individuals compared to sighted controls, including grey and white matter changes across multiple brain regions.

Tactile suppression stems from sensation-specific sensorimotor predictions

The paper demonstrates that tactile suppression is specifically tuned to predicted sensory states of movement, not just unspecific gating.

Cardiac interoception is enhanced in blind individuals

This study finds that blind individuals have better accuracy in detecting their heartbeat compared to sighted controls, suggesting enhanced cardiac interoception due to visual deprivation.

Identification of a developmental switch in information transfer between whisker S1 and S2 cortex in mice

The paper identifies a developmental switch in information transfer from wS1 to wS2 cortex in mice, showing excitatory connections emerge after the first post-natal week.

Structural and functional network-level reorganization in the coding of auditory motion directions and sound source locations in the absence of vision

The paper investigates how early blindness affects brain networks involved in spatial hearing, finding enhanced motion direction coding in hMT+/V5 and reduced coding in hPT in blind individuals.

Evidence for independent processing of shape by vision and touch

The paper investigates whether visual and haptic shape recognition share the same neural processing by comparing performance in shape comparison tasks across modalities.

Malleability of the cortical hand map following a finger nerve block

This study examines cortical hand map changes after finger nerve block, finding persistent representation despite input loss, suggesting distributed processing and homeostatic mechanisms.

Widespread nociceptive maps in the human neonatal somatosensory cortex

The paper shows that newborn infants have widespread nociceptive maps in the somatosensory cortex, aligning with their disorganised pain behaviour.

Hyper-adaptation in the Human Brain: Functional and structural changes in the foot section of the primary motor cortex in a top wheelchair racing Paralympian

The paper examines functional and structural changes in the primary motor cortex of a Paralympian with congenital paraplegia compared to controls and other paraplegic athletes.

Modeling tactile pleasantness across skin types at the individual level reveals a reliable and stable basic function

The paper shows that individual tactile pleasantness follows a velocity-dependent quadratic function across skin types, with stability and trait-like characteristics.

Impaired trigeminal control of ingestive behavior in the Prrxl1- / - mouse is associated with a lemniscal-biased orosensory deafferentation

This study investigates ingestive behavior deficits in Prrxl1 knockout mice, revealing impaired trigeminal pathway function and its impact on orosensory processing across multiple timescales.

Predictive attenuation of touch and tactile gating are distinct perceptual phenomena

The paper distinguishes between predictive attenuation and tactile gating as separate perceptual phenomena by showing they operate independently and are not correlated.

Texture is encoded in precise temporal spiking patterns in primate somatosensory cortex

The paper shows that texture is encoded in precise temporal spiking patterns in primate somatosensory cortex, with millisecond precision and perceptual relevance.

Beyond body maps: information content of specific body parts is distributed across the somatosensory Homunculus

The paper shows that body part and action information is distributed across the somatosensory homunculus beyond primary areas, revealing new organizational principles in S1.

Discriminative and affective touch converge: Somatosensory cortex represents A-beta input in a CT-like manner

The paper shows that tactile pleasure involves both fast A-beta and slow CT signaling in the somatosensory cortex, challenging the traditional divide between discriminative and affective touch.

Ipsilateral stimulus encoding in primary and secondary somatosensory cortex of awake mice

The paper investigates ipsilateral stimulus encoding in primary and secondary somatosensory cortex of awake mice, finding that S2 encodes ipsilateral stimuli more accurately than S1.

Illusory tactile movement crosses arms and legs and is coded in external space

The paper shows humans perceive tactile stimuli as moving across body parts in external space, not just along anatomical boundaries, using a Bayesian model based on Euclidean distance.