Evidence map›Paper›PMID 31239467›Full record

ArticleScientific reports2019

Alpha-band oscillations reflect external spatial coding for tactile stimuli in sighted, but not in congenitally blind humans.

Jonathan T W Schubert, Verena N Buchholz, Julia Föcker, Andreas K Engel, Brigitte Röder, Tobias Heed

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Scientific reports, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
6citing papers in PubMed
0.9field-weighted citation impact, top 28% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

6 citing papers in PubMed, 13 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Flexible Perception of Tactile Cues in Multiple Reference Frames.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026
    Article
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  6. No Evidence for a Role of Spatially Modulated α-Band Activity in Tactile Remapping and Short-Latency, Overt Orienting Behavior.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2020
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

6 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.

Jonathan T W SchubertBiological Psychology and Neuropsychology, Faculty of Psychology and Human Movement Science, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
Verena N BuchholzDepartment of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany.
Julia FöckerCollege of Social Sciences, School of Psychology, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, United Kingdom.
Andreas K EngelDepartment of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany.
Brigitte RöderBiological Psychology and Neuropsychology, Faculty of Psychology and Human Movement Science, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
Tobias HeedBiopsychology & Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Movement Science, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany. tobias.heed@uni-bielefeld.de.
Universität Hamburg · DEBielefeld University · DEFriedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg · DEUniversity of Lincoln · GB

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

We investigated the function of oscillatory alpha-band activity in the neural coding of spatial information during tactile processing. Sighted humans concurrently encode tactile location in skin-based and, after integration with posture, external spatial reference frames, whereas congenitally blind humans preferably use skin-based coding. Accordingly, lateralization of alpha-band activity in parietal regions during attentional orienting in expectance of tactile stimulation reflected external spatial coding in sighted, but skin-based coding in blind humans. Here, we asked whether alpha-band activity plays a similar role in spatial coding for tactile processing, that is, after the stimulus has been received. Sighted and congenitally blind participants were cued to attend to one hand in order to detect rare tactile deviant stimuli at this hand while ignoring tactile deviants at the other hand and tactile standard stimuli at both hands. The reference frames encoded by oscillatory activity during tactile processing were probed by adopting either an uncrossed or crossed hand posture. In sighted participants, attended relative to unattended standard stimuli suppressed the power in the alpha-band over ipsilateral centro-parietal and occipital cortex. Hand crossing attenuated this attentional modulation predominantly over ipsilateral posterior-parietal cortex. In contrast, although contralateral alpha-activity was enhanced for attended versus unattended stimuli in blind participants, no crossing effects were evident in the oscillatory activity of this group. These findings suggest that oscillatory alpha-band activity plays a pivotal role in the neural coding of external spatial information for touch.

Indexed as

Alpha RhythmPhysical StimulationTouch PerceptionAdultBlindnessCase-Control StudiesFemaleHumansMaleYoung Adult

Identifiers

PMID31239467
PMCPMC6592921
OpenAlexW2954981946

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

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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.