Abstract
The somatotopic representation of the tactile stimulation on the finger in the brain is an essential part of understanding the human somatosensory system as well as rehabilitation and other clinical therapies. Many studies have used vibrotactile stimulations and reported finger somatotopic representations in the Brodmann area 3 (BA 3). On the contrary, few studies investigated finger somatotopic representation using pressure stimulations. Therefore, the present study aimed to find a comprehensive somatotopic representation (somatotopic map and inter- and intra-digit distance) within BA 2 of humans that could describe tactile stimulations on different joints across the fingers by applying pressure stimulation to three joints-the first (p1), second (p2), and third (p3) joints-of four fingers (index, middle, ring, and little finger). Significant differences were observed in the inter-digit distance between the first joints (p1) of the index and little fingers, and between the third joints (p3) of the index and little fingers. In addition, a significant difference was observed in the intra-digit distance between p1 and p3 of the little finger. This study suggests that a somatotopic map and inter- and intra-digit distance could be found in BA 2 in response to pressure stimulation on finger joints.
Highlights
Recent advances in haptic technology have drawn attention to the brain mechanisms underlying the perception of tactile stimuli and the processing of tactile information
The group analysis result for the peak coordinates at Brodmann area 2 (BA 2) activated for each joint of the index, middle, and little fingers upon application of the pressure stimulation is shown in Table 1 (MNI coordinates)
Pressure stimulation was applied on each joint [first (p1), second (p2), or third (p3) joint] of the four fingers, and the peak coordinates were extracted from BA 2 using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
Summary
Recent advances in haptic technology have drawn attention to the brain mechanisms underlying the perception of tactile stimuli and the processing of tactile information. We measure all the distances of each joint of each finger from the reference location (p1 of the index finger) all at once from which we can examine whether it is plausible to distinguish activation locations for each joint of each finger within BA 2 Such estimation may provide a comprehensive view of the somatotopic representation of inter- and intra-digit tactile stimulations. By identifying a peak activation location (peak coordinates) among the activation locations for each joint of each finger, we construct a somatotopic map and estimate the inter- and intra-digit distances to discriminate tactile stimulations between different joints as well as different fingers
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