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How Texture Effects Tactile Speed

Our senses are such an innate thing for us. Sight. Sound. Taste. Touch. All of these things

are so natural and automatic that we don’t even really think about what’s happening unless it is

something we are really focusing on. Touch specifically is something that fascinates me. We are

constantly touching or being touched by something. Whether its my fingers as I type this paper,

or the air conditioning blowing my hair across my face, touch is always happening. However as

natural as it is, we probably never think of the specifics of touch. These are all specifics that we

may not know, but our brain is processing every millisecond throughout the day. The force of an

object against our skin, the speed, the texture etc. However, though our brain is capable of

processing tactile speed, texture of an objects changes the neural code for the accuracy of tactile

speed (Delhaye et al. 2019).

So, what is involved in the sense of touch you may ask. The Somatosensory system is

what makes us distinguish what is sight, sound, touch, etc. (Hsaio and Gomez-Ramirez 2019).

We may not realize it, but our brain is constantly working and process everything around us.

When it comes to touch, there is more than one basic sense that is processed. “Another defining

characteristic of the somatosensory system is its ecological versatility, with an ability to detect

and process information about a wide-ranging set of tactile perturbations (e.g., temperature, pain,

itch, light touch, and joint position)” (Hsaio and Gomez-Ramirez 2019). What does this have to

do with tactile speed though? Tactile speed is the amount of time it takes for our brain to process

a part of our bonding touching or feeling an object. All these other elements, temperature, pain,

pressure, itch, these all play a factor in that. These are all a part of the textile experience.

Now that we know what textile experience is, let’s look at some examples. One example

is a leave falling from a tree and grazing our arm. When a leaf falls me may not see it or hear it,
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but without even noticing we fill it graze our arm. We might not even notice, but our brain does.

As the leaf grazes your our arm, our neurotransmitters are detecting touch whether we

acknowledge it or not. Another example of a tactile experience is the bristles a hairbrush grazing

your neck as you brush your hair. Though you are expecting to feel the bristles against your

scalp, you slip and graze your neck. When this is happens, the first thing that comes to mind is

how it feels. What is that feeling? Spiky? Soft? The next question we ask subconsciously is, was

it painful? We never really, how fast did that graze my neck? But our brain does, and

unfortunately due to contamination of texture, our brain cannot pinpoint the exact tactile speed.

The work of Delhaye et al. (2019) examines the effects of texture on tactile speed.

Tactile speed as mentioned before is, the amount of time it takes for our brain to process a part of

our bonding touching or feeling an object. Research has suggested that tactile judgment of speed

is influenced by physical properties of the moving object, though the neural mechanisms

underlying this process remain poorly understood (Yang et al. 2017). Multiple studies have been

done to explain the theory of texture contamination on tactile speed. In one study, the subjects

were blind folded textured surfaces were scanned across their fingertips and textile speeds

varied. The results were that indeed, the different textures of the objects affected the tactile speed

results (Delhaye et al. 2019).

We know that there are many elements that go into the neural processing of the sensory,

touch. Touch is not just a sense but a combination of elements, heat, pain, and texture just to

name a few. Our brain is capable of many things but is never perfect. We see this with the

findings of the effect of texture on speed. After reviewing all the information, we can conclude

that indeed, though our brain is capable of processing tactile speed, texture of an object changes

neural code for the accuracy of tactile speed (Delhaye et al. 2019).
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Work Cited

Delhaye BP, O'Donnell MK, Lieber JD, McLellan KR, Bensmaia SJ. 2019. Feeling fooled: Texture

contaminates the neural code for tactile speed. PLOS Biology, 17:e3000431

Hsiao S, Gomez-Ramirez M. Touch. In: Gottfried JA, editor. Neurobiology of Sensation and

Reward. Boca Raton (FL): CRC Press/Taylor & Francis; 2011. Chapter 7, pg 141-160.

Yang J, Kitada R, Kochiyama T, Yu Y, Makita K, Araki Y, Wu J, Sadato N. 2017. Brain networks

involved in tactile speed classification of moving dot patterns: the effects of speed and dot

periodicity. Scientific Reports 7:40931