Perrotta André, Pais-Vieira Carla, Allahdad Mehrab K, Bicho Estela, Pais-Vieira Miguel
Centro de Investigação em Ciência e Tecnologia das Artes (CITAR), Escola da Artes, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Porto, Portugal.
Centro de Investigação Interdisciplinar em Saúde-Porto, Instituto de Ciências da Saúde, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Porto, Portugal.
MethodsX. 2020 Mar 19;7:100852. doi: 10.1016/j.mex.2020.100852. eCollection 2020.
The neurophysiological basis of width discrimination has been extensively studied in rodents and has shown that active and passive tactile discrimination engage fundamentally different neural networks. Although previous studies have analyzed active and passive tactile processing in humans, little is known about the neurophysiological basis of width discrimination in humans. Here we present a width discrimination task for humans that reproduces the main features of the width discrimination task previously developed for rodents. The task required subjects to actively or passively sample two movable bars forming a "narrow" or "wide" aperture. Subjects were then required to press one of two buttons to indicate if the bar width was "narrow" or "wide". Behavioral testing showed that subjects were capable of discriminating between wide or narrow apertures up to distances of 0.1 cm. Electroencephalography (EEG) recordings further suggested distinct topographic maps for active and passive versions of the task during the period associated with the aperture discrimination. These results indicate that the Human Differential Width Discrimination Task is a valuable tool to describe the behavioral characteristics and neurophysiological basis of tactile processing.•• cm.•
在啮齿动物中，宽度辨别能力的神经生理基础已得到广泛研究，结果表明主动和被动触觉辨别所涉及的神经网络存在根本差异。尽管此前已有研究分析了人类的主动和被动触觉处理过程，但对于人类宽度辨别能力的神经生理基础却知之甚少。在此，我们为人类设计了一项宽度辨别任务，该任务重现了先前为啮齿动物开发的宽度辨别任务的主要特征。该任务要求受试者主动或被动地对形成“窄”或“宽”孔径的两个可移动条进行采样。然后，受试者需要按下两个按钮之一，以表明条的宽度是“窄”还是“宽”。行为测试表明，受试者能够辨别宽度相差0.1厘米的宽孔径或窄孔径。脑电图（EEG）记录进一步表明，在与孔径辨别相关的时间段内，该任务的主动和被动版本具有不同的地形图。这些结果表明，人类差异宽度辨别任务是描述触觉处理行为特征和神经生理基础的宝贵工具。
