Decoupling of Haptic Components Suggests that Somatosensory Percepts are Differentially Processed in Working Memory

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Decoupling of Haptic Components Suggests that Somatosensory Percepts are Differentially Processed in Working Memory Michael Notaras1, 2*, George Van Doorn3 and Mark Symmons3 1 University of Melbourne, Florey Department of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Australia 2 Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Australia 3 Monash University, Faculty of Arts, Australia Background The somatosenses are understudied relative to the other senses, with many basic properties of tactile and kinesthetic working memory (WM) remaining unassessed. As it is experimentally difficult to control for extraneous stimulation, the tactile and kinesthetic senses are often tested together under the umbrella term 'haptics'. However, it is unknown whether the tactile and kinesthetic WM systems interact or differ in structure. Our aim was to resolve whether these sensory components of haptic function maintain independent sensory properties or interacted in WM. Method A cross-modal matching-to-sample WM task was developed to determine whether the tactile and kinesthetic components of the haptic modality are uniformly processed in WM. The Tactile Display System (TDS), a two-stage haptic presentation system powered by two x-y plane-positioned stepper motors attached by ball-races, passively delivered stimuli to subjects tactually or kinesthetically. Eighteen stimuli (maze-like geometric arrangements) arranged into six sets of equal complexity were recorded on the TDS based on 0.1524 mm steps expressed every 0.2 ms as detected by two optical encoders. Eleven subjects completed 36 trials each (for a total of 396 trials), with encoding, interference and recognition modality and handedness effects being counterbalanced and controlled for. Results No difference in performance between unimodal or crossmodal trials for both tactile and kinesthetic WM was found, providing support for the idea that the somatosenses are processed supramodally. However, subtle differences between the two modalities were identified. Tactile WM is more susceptible to interference than kinesthetic WM, which was also found to maintain its own spurious properties in WM. Our study provides the first evidence that the two major sensory components of haptic function maintain independent properties in WM, having implications for the design of haptic tasks in memory research. Keywords: haptics, Tactile working memory, kinesthetic working memory, psychophysical memory, tactile display system Conference: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014. Presentation Type: Poster Topic: Memory and Learning Citation: Notaras M, Van Doorn G and Symmons M (2015). Decoupling of Haptic Components Suggests that Somatosensory Percepts are Differentially Processed in Working Memory. Conference Abstract: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00295 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 19 Feb 2015; Published Online: 24 Apr 2015. * Correspondence: Mr. Michael Notaras, University of Melbourne, Florey Department of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Melbourne, Australia, mnotaras@student.unimelb.edu.au Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Michael Notaras George Van Doorn Mark Symmons Google Michael Notaras George Van Doorn Mark Symmons Google Scholar Michael Notaras George Van Doorn Mark Symmons PubMed Michael Notaras George Van Doorn Mark Symmons Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.