ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2013
A physical constraint on perceptual learning: tactile spatial acuity improves with training to a limit set by finger size.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed.
- Human perceptual learning is delayed by the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor partial agonist D-cycloserine.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2021Trial
- The somatosensory temporal discrimination threshold changes after a placebo procedure.Experimental brain research · 2018Trial
- A grating orientation task with controlled dome elevation speed and contact force: stimulus conditions and day-to-day reliability.MethodsX · 2026Article
- Article
- Evaluation of exploration time, accuracy, and task difficulty perception in three tactile tests among physiotherapy students.The Journal of manual & manipulative therapy · 2025Article
- Transfer of Tactile Learning to Untrained Body Parts: Emerging Cortical Mechanisms.The Neuroscientist : a review journal bringing neurobiology, neurology and psychiatry · 2025Review
- Differential modulation of the cortical alpha rhythm and activation of distinct neural networks during tactile perception training by learners and non-learners.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Article
- Surgical experience and different glove wearing conditions affect tactile sensibility.Heliyon · 2022Article
- Article
- Idiosyncratic selection of active touch for shape perception.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- No evidence for sex differences in tactile distance anisotropy.Experimental brain research · 2022Article
- Individual Performance in Compliance Discrimination is Constrained by Skin Mechanics but Improved under Active Control.World Haptics Conference. World Haptics Conference · 2021Article
- Tactile angle discriminability improvement: roles of training time intervals and different types of training tasks.Journal of neurophysiology · 2019Article
- Postural stability in people with visual impairment.Brain and behavior · 2019Article
- Comparing Tactile to Auditory Guidance for Blind Individuals.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2019Article
- Measuring dexterity in the podiatrist population: a cross-sectional comparison of novice students and experienced podiatrists.BMC medical education · 2018Article
- Functional consequences of experience-dependent plasticity on tactile perception following perceptual learning.The European journal of neuroscience · 2016Article
- Article
- Tactile orientation perception: an ideal observer analysis of human psychophysical performance in relation to macaque area 3b receptive fields.Journal of neurophysiology · 2015Article
- Enhanced tactile acuity through mental states.Scientific reports · 2015Article
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3 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In touch as in vision, perceptual acuity improves with training to an extent that differs greatly across people; even individuals with similar initial acuity may undergo markedly different improvement with training. What accounts for this variability in perceptual learning? We hypothesized that a simple physical characteristic, fingertip surface area, might constrain tactile learning, because previous research suggests that larger fingers have more widely spaced mechanoreceptors. To test our hypothesis, we trained 10 human participants intensively on a tactile spatial acuity task. During 4 d, participants completed 1900 training trials (38 50-trial blocks) in which they discriminated the orientation of square-wave gratings pressed onto the stationary index or ring finger, with auditory feedback provided to signal correct and incorrect responses. We progressively increased task difficulty by shifting to thinner groove widths whenever participants achieved ≥90% correct block performance. We took optical scans to measure surface area from the distal interphalangeal crease to the tip of the finger. Participants' acuity improved markedly on the trained finger and to a lesser extent on the untrained finger. Crucially, we found that participants' tactile spatial acuity improved toward a theoretical optimum set by their finger size; participants with worse initial performance relative to their finger size improved more with training, and posttraining performance was better correlated than pretraining performance with finger size. These results strongly support the hypothesis that tactile perceptual learning is limited by finger size. We suspect that analogous physical constraints on perceptual learning will be found in other sensory modalities.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.