Tactile duration compression by vibrotactile adaptation.

In the visual modality adaptation to high temporal frequency can result in spatially localized apparent duration compression. The principal point of adaptation is thought to be early in the visual system, at which point temporal information is encoded within sustained (parvocellular) and transient (magnocellular) channels. Here, we investigate whether the adaptation-based time compression could also be found in the tactile modality, which also has sustained (slowly adapting) and transient (rapidly adapting) neural channels. Our results showed that periods of vibration seem compressed when presented to a region of the skin surface adapted earlier to higher frequencies. This finding indicates that human duration perception can be altered by adaptation of temporal sensory channels in similar ways in vision and touch.