Crossmodal Research Laboratory, Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford University Oxford, UK ; Department of Systems Neuroscience, Center for Experimental Medicine, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf Hamburg, Germany.
Faculty of Science, School of Natural Sciences and Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University Liverpool, UK.
Front Psychol. 2013 Dec 6;4:913. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00913. eCollection 2013.
Tactile perception is inhibited during movement execution, a phenomenon known as tactile suppression. Here, we investigated whether the type of movement determines whether or not this form of sensory suppression occurs. Participants performed simple reaching or exploratory movements. Tactile discrimination thresholds were calculated for vibratory stimuli delivered to participants' wrists while executing the movement, and while at rest (a tactile discrimination task, TD). We also measured discrimination performance in a same vs. different task for the explored materials during the execution of the different movements (a surface discrimination task, SD). The TD and SD tasks could either be performed singly or together, both under active movement and passive conditions. Consistent with previous results, tactile thresholds measured at rest were significantly lower than those measured during both active movement and passive touch (that is, tactile suppression was observed). Moreover, SD performance was significantly better under conditions of single-tasking, active movements, as well as exploratory movements, as compared to conditions of dual-tasking, passive movements, and reaching movements, respectively. Therefore, the present results demonstrate that when active hand movements are made with the purpose of gaining information about the surface properties of different materials an enhanced perceptual performance is observed. As such, it would appear that tactile suppression occurs for irrelevant tactual features during both reaching and exploratory movements, but not for those task-relevant features that result from action execution during tactile exploration. Taken together, then, these results support a context-dependent modulation of tactile suppression during movement execution.
触觉感知在运动执行过程中受到抑制，这种现象被称为触觉抑制。在这里，我们研究了运动的类型是否决定了这种形式的感官抑制是否发生。参与者执行简单的伸手或探索性运动。在执行运动和休息时（触觉辨别任务，TD）向参与者手腕施加振动刺激，计算触觉辨别阈值。我们还在执行不同运动时（表面辨别任务，SD）对不同材料进行探索时，测量了相同与不同任务下的辨别性能。TD 和 SD 任务可以单独或一起执行，无论是在主动运动还是被动条件下。与先前的结果一致，在休息时测量的触觉阈值明显低于在主动运动和被动触摸期间测量的阈值（即观察到触觉抑制）。此外，与双任务、被动运动和伸手运动相比，单任务、主动运动和探索性运动条件下的 SD 性能明显更好。因此，目前的结果表明，当主动手部运动是为了获取有关不同材料表面特性的信息而进行时，会观察到感知性能的提高。因此，在伸手和探索性运动过程中，触觉抑制似乎会针对无关的触觉特征发生，但不会针对触觉探索过程中由于动作执行而产生的那些与任务相关的特征发生。总之，这些结果支持运动执行过程中触觉抑制的上下文依赖性调节。
