Tactile Texture 857

Tactile Texture
de Montre al, C E Chapman and A M Smith, Universite Montreal, QC, Canada
2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Tactile surface texture varies along a continuum from smooth to rough. Surface asperities are absent for smooth surfaces such as polished glass or fabrics like satin or silk; rougher surfaces (abrasive papers or burlap), in contrast, are characterized by the presence of surface asperities. The term rough is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as a surface diversified with small projections, points, bristles etc; not even or smooth. Roughness is thus a function of multiple tactile elements which may vary in their size, shape (pointed vs. round), and distribution (periodic vs. nonperiodic; distance between elements) on the surface. The material properties of the surface (hardness/softness or stiffness/elasticity) can also contribute to the overall impression of texture: some surfaces are nondeformable (abrasive papers); others are deformable (human skin, textiles). Yet, deformability is not a key element for roughness perception since subjects can scale the roughness of a continuum of abrasive papers or fabrics. The importance of the physical characteristics of the surface to the perception of roughness has been investigated experimentally using surfaces with randomly disposed tactile elements (abrasive papers) and also simple periodic patterns (gratings formed by alternating ridges and grooves, raised dots similar to Braille dots). The latter approach has an advantage in that the size and spacing, and so the density, of the tactile elements can be varied independently. In contrast, particle diameter, spacing, and density all change with grit value across a range of abrasive papers (grit refers to the number of openings per inch (2.54 cm) in the sieves used to produce abrasive papers).

Tactile Roughness Psychophysics

In everyday life, impressions about surface texture are normally obtained by exploring the surface or object with your hand/fingers, using what is termed active touch. The first systematic evaluations of perceived roughness employed abrasive papers. These studies demonstrated that roughness increases with a decrease in the grit value of abrasive surfaces, corresponding to larger particle diameters and lower particle densities. The relationship between perceived roughness and particle diameter has been described as a power function with a slope of approximately 1.5.

The Weber fraction (the minimal difference that can be discriminated relative to the magnitude of the standard stimulus) is approximately 0.30 for very fine abrasive papers. This relatively high Weber fraction, which corresponds to an ability to discriminate a 3 mm change in particle density and/or size for a standard surface of 2000 grit (average particle size, 9 mm), may reflect the well-known tendency of the Weber fraction to increase at very low intensities. As particle density, size, and spacing covary across abrasive papers, however, such studies cannot determine the relative importance of each factor to the perception of roughness. For this reason, subsequent studies have used simple manufactured patterns (grooved metal plates, etched arrays of gratings, or raised dots) to systematically determine the contribution of various physical parameters to roughness appreciation. Using grooved metal plates, in which case a single dimension can be varied independently, it has been shown that roughness increases as a function of groove width (ridge width constant). In contrast, perceived roughness declines modestly as ridge width is increased (groove width constant). Early experiments were restricted to a small range of surfaces (groove or ridge widths of 0.1251 mm). In these early studies, spatial period (SP, distance center-to-center between adjacent ridges) per se was not the determining factor for roughness because the range of SPs in each series (varying groove or ridge width) was identical (0.375 1.25 mm). These results have since been extended to larger spacings, up to a SP of 3.1 mm, and also finer spacings (0.1 mm SP). The Weber fraction for discriminating gratings is $0.05, corresponding to a 50 mm threshold for a standard SP of 1 mm. As with fine abrasive papers, the Weber fraction is higher for smaller SPs (0.300.50 for a 40 mm SP standard), corresponding to finely textured surfaces. Further studies to determine the contribution of the physical structure of the surface to perceived roughness have been undertaken using patterns of raised dots, the spacing of which can be varied in one dimension, as with mechanical gratings, or in two dimensions. When spacing is increased in a single dimension, along the direction of scanning, then subjective tactile roughness shows a linear relationship with SP up to 8.5 mm (Figure 1(a)). This relationship is similar to that seen with mechanical gratings, extending the results to a wider range of SPs. When, in contrast, dot spacing is changed in two dimensions (tetragonal patterns), then an inverted U-shaped relation between perceived roughness and dot spacing is obtained (Figure 1(b)): roughness increases with

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3

Perceived roughness

1 95 mm s1 50 mm s1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 b 1 2 3 4 5 6

Spatial period (mm)

Dot spacing (mm)

Figure 1 (a) Mean normalized roughness estimates ( SEM) as a function of longitudinal SP for raised dot surfaces displaced under the finger tip (passive touch). SP was increased in one dimension, corresponding to the direction of the scan (see representative surfaces). A monotonic relation between roughness and SP was found, and this was independent of the scanning speed (trials intermixed during acquisition). (b) Mean normalized roughness estimates (n 21) plotted as a function of the dot spacing of tetragonal arrays of raised dots (active touch). Dot spacing was increased in two dimensions (see representative surfaces). Roughness showed a U-shaped relation with dot spacing. (a) Adapted from figure 4 in Meftah E-M, Belingard L, and Chapman CE (2000) Relative effects of spatial and temporal characteristics of scanned surfaces on human perception of tactile roughness using passive touch. Experimental Brain Research 132: 351361, and reproduced with kind permission of Springer Science and Business Media. (b) Adapted and reprinted, with permission, from the Annual Review of Neuroscience, Volume 15 1992 by Annual Reviews.

increased dot spacing up to 3.2 mm, and thereafter declines. The apparent discrepancy between the two sets of results reflects, in large part, the fact that the height of the dots in the tetragonal arrays was very low (0.35 mm vs. 1.8 mm for the one-dimensional arrays in A), and it is known that subjective roughness increases with increased dot height (see below). Thus, there may be a family of curves relating roughness perception to the spacing of regular arrays of raised dots. Several factors related to the physical characteristics of the raised dot surfaces modify overall roughness. Thus, when dot diameter is increased then perceived roughness declines. The latter observation is consistent with the decrease in roughness found when the ridge width of mechanical gratings is increased. In addition, as mentioned above, roughness increases with the height of the raised dots. This observation likely reflects both decreased contact between the skin and the smooth surface forming the floor between the dots and increased mechanical deformation of the skin by the raised dots as the skin penetrates more deeply into the spaces between adjacent raised dots. Finally, lubricating the surface decreases its subjective roughness.

Importance of the Mode, and Parameters, of Touch

One key consideration for tactile roughness is that discrimination of surface roughness is better when

there is tangential movement between the skin and the surface, or what can be termed dynamic touch, as compared to no movement or static touch. For example, roughness discrimination thresholds are approximately doubled when using static touch as compared to dynamic touch. The superiority of dynamic touch over static touch can be explained by several factors. First, dynamic touch recruits rapidly adapting mechanoreceptors (RA and PC or Pacinian afferents) as well as slowly adapting mechanoreceptors (SA types I and II), while static touch only activates SA receptors. Second, the discharge rates for SA afferents are higher for dynamic stimuli than for static stimuli, so that the signal-to-noise ratio is increased. Finally, neurons in primary somatosensory cortex show a bias for dynamic as opposed to static stimuli, so that the population of neurons contributing to the processing of the tactile input is potentially larger for dynamic inputs. There has been a long-standing debate in the literature as to whether or not tactile perception is equivalent with active touch (movement made by the subject; the stimulus remains stationary) and passive touch (surface moved over the skin by an external agent; the subject remains stationary). Intuitively, it seems obvious that active touch should show an advantage, in that the exploration is controlled and presumably optimized by the subject. Passive touch, in contrast, is restricted by the parameters of stimulation imposed by the external agent. Nevertheless, current evidence indicates that if exploration conditions

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are suitably matched, then roughness discrimination and magnitude estimates of surface roughness are similar for active and passive touch. Systematic changes in roughness perception can, nevertheless, be produced by changing the physical parameters of the movement. For example, the psychophysical curve for perceived roughness of mechanical gratings is shifted up when contact force is increased from very light (<0.3 N) to very heavy ($7 N) contact forces. Intermediate estimates are obtained with a contact force closer to that employed during active tactile exploration ($1.5 N). This observation, along with the fact that roughness is a function of multiple tactile elements and that roughness increases with increased dot height (above), leads to the possibility that the change in friction (ratio of the tangential to normal force) offered by the surface contributes substantially to roughness. Recent results indicate that while subjective roughness decreases when kinetic friction (i.e., the friction observed during the actual scanning movement) is reduced by lubricating the surface, the most important variable appears to be fluctuations in tangential force, as reflected in the root mean square of the first derivative of the tangential force, dF/dt. Tangential force variations likely also contribute to the human ability to detect a single raised dot of 13 mm on a smooth background. Another important parameter of exploration, scanning speed, has little influence on roughness estimates, at least for coarser textures. As shown in Figure 1(a), there is perceptual constancy for roughness over a range of scanning speeds (50 and 95 mm s1 here; 10 to 100 mm s1 in other studies). To situate these speeds, fair to good Braille readers scan text at 60125 mm s1, while excellent Braille readers use faster scans of up to 190 mm s1. When very rapid scanning speeds are employed ($200 mm s1), roughness estimates show a modest decline, likely reflecting the fact that the stimulus is less effective, as there is less time for mechanical deformation of the skin by the tactile elements.

Neuronal Codes Underlying Tactile Roughness

The neuronal codes underlying tactile roughness have been the subject of a number of investigations, mostly concentrating on characterizing the responses of the cutaneous mechanoreceptive afferents in the monkey, and relating these to the results of human psychophysical experiments. This is a difficult task because roughness is critically dependent on surface structure, and this in a number of ways, so that no single physical parameter can describe surface roughness. Moreover, surface texture is a continuum from the micron

to the millimeter level. Indeed, it may be overly optimistic to expect that a single neuronal code can explain the subjective impression of roughness across the entire range. A number of candidate neuronal codes exist. One of the simplest is mean discharge rate, often referred to as an intensive code. Experimental evidence in favor of such a code has been obtained using fabrics, mechanical gratings, and raised dot surfaces. These data are, necessarily, restricted to a consideration of three types of mechanoreceptive afferents SAI, RA, and PC because glabrous skin in the monkey lacks SAII innervation. For fabrics, there is limited information suggesting that RA afferents but not SAI afferents show a linear relation between firing rate and surface texture. For gratings displaced sinusoidally over the skin, the mean cyclic discharge rate of all three types of afferent increases with groove width, as does perceived roughness. SAI afferents appear to be particularly important for the tactile roughness of gratings, an observation recently extended down to very fine gratings. But, only PC afferents, and not SAI and RA afferents, show a decrease in discharge rate with increased ridge width as required to explain the decrease in roughness with increased ridge width. This leaves open the possibility that ridge width may be signaled by another code, specifically the temporal frequency (speed/SP) of discharge of the population of afferents activated by moving gratings. For raised dot arrays with two-dimensional changes in spacing, in contrast, the mean discharge frequencies of SAI, RA, and PC afferents take a U-shaped form with increased dot spacing, similar to the psychophysical curve shown in Figure 1(b). But these neural functions all peak at a smaller spacing value than the peak in perceived roughness, so that the correlations with subjective roughness are relatively poor. This observation has been interpreted as suggesting that an intensive code may not be applicable to these surfaces, and by extension to other textured surfaces. An alternative explanation is, however, that the shift in the peak of the U-shaped function may reflect species differences related to differences in the size of the stimulated digit relative to the dot patterns (humans vs. monkeys). Another candidate is a modal code whereby roughness reflects some combination of inputs from the various mechanoreceptive afferents activated by textured stimuli, an interesting idea since all major types of afferents found in monkey glabrous skin (SAI, RA, and PC) are activated when a textured surface is displaced over the skin. One variant of this, based principally on psychophysical data, is the duplex theory whereby spatial cues are thought to contribute to the appreciation of coarser surfaces (see below),

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but vibratory cues (presumably via PC afferents with their exquisite sensitivity to mechanical vibration) are thought to be critical for the appreciation of finer surfaces. Unfortunately, recordings from PC afferents have not confirmed that PC discharge covaries with the subjective roughness of fine textures. Another possibility is some form of temporal code, an observation consistent with the demonstration that peripheral afferents fire in phase-locked bursts to the temporal frequency of mechanical gratings, and that this periodicity is preserved within the firing pattern of both thalamic and somatosensory cortical neurons. The observation that the subjective roughness of ridge-varying gratings is critically dependent on temporal and not spatial variables suggests that a temporal code may well contribute to roughness appreciation. The close correlation between tangential force variations and roughness also supports the importance of a temporal code. A temporal code is not likely to be exclusive since it is difficult to reconcile with the observation that roughness estimates are independent of scanning speed. Nevertheless, temporal coding could complement an intensive code. Finally, a spatial code has also been proposed, and is supported by the results of a number of studies. This hypothesis was developed to explain the inverted U-shaped relation between subjective roughness and two-dimensional raised dot arrays (Figure 1(b)). The spatial code is defined as the mean absolute difference in firing rate between afferent fibers separated by 2 mm. Such a neuronal code has the interesting property of being insensitive to changes in scanning speed, and so consistent with observations that roughness perception is independent of scanning speed (Figure 1(a)). According to the spatial variation hypothesis, differences in the firing rates of SAI afferents innervating skin regions separated by 2 mm are converted centrally, at some unspecified location, into an intensive code that signals roughness independent of the scanning conditions. Critical to this hypothesis, the required fine-grained spatial detail is indeed preserved in the discharge of neurons in area 3b of primary somatosensory cortex. Other studies have, on the other hand, also shown the existence of neurons, including in area 3b, whose mean discharge rate covaries with the SP of either gratings or raised dot surfaces, as predicted by the intensive code. At present, it is not clear if such cells reflect the result of the central transformation suggested for the spatial code, or a simpler intensive code. The SAI spatial code has been extended to other types of surfaces (gratings, random raised dot surfaces). While SAI spatial variation may be the neuronal code employed across the smooth-rough

continuum, SAI mean impulse rate may also contribute since there is evidence that SAI mean impulse rate, as well as SAI spatial variation, both covary with the perceived roughness of fine textures.

Remote Sensing of Roughness

The coding mechanisms described above are applicable to textures explored with the bare finger, that is, direct contact. There is now a growing body of knowledge about remote sensing of texture, using a hand-held probe, particularly important for new technical applications such as haptic interfaces for the remote operation of instruments and training surgical skills within virtual-reality environments. The various approaches taken all share a common theme in using force-feedback through a hand-held tool or implement to guide the operator in interacting with the remote or virtual environment. When using a probe, roughness discrimination has variously been reported to be unaffected or impaired. In contrast, subjective roughness is increased when surfaces are explored with a probe as compared to the bare finger. It is evident that a spatial code cannot account for the appreciation of roughness through a hand-held probe. Instead, roughness must be dependent on vibrations transmitted to the hand through the probe. Vibration sensitivity is highest for PC afferents. They act as highpass filters and have a threshold of <1 mm for frequencies of 250300 Hz. RA afferents are also sensitive to vibration, but for lower frequencies corresponding to the flutter range of 250 Hz. Their threshold for activation is higher than for PC afferents (10100 mm). The challenge for the future will be to determine the respective roles of each type of afferent to the remote sensing of roughness.

Summary
Tactile roughness is a rich and varied sensation, dependent on numerous parameters of surface geometry, so that no single parameter can precisely define roughness. The dynamics between the explored surface and the skin contribute to subjective roughness, but these have not as yet been fully characterized. A number of peripheral neuronal codes for roughness have been proposed, and the SAI spatial code has received considerable experimental support. Nevertheless, while a single, parsimonious explanation for tactile roughness is a very attractive idea, alternate hypotheses need to be more fully explored, and this using a variety of different surfaces, covering the entire range from the micron to the millimetre level.

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See also: Cross-Modal Interactions Between Vision and Touch; Human Haptics; Somatosensory Cortex: Functional Architecture; Somatosensory Cortex; Somatosensory Perception; Somatosensory Receptive Fields; Tactile Coding in Peripheral Neural Populations.
Katz D (1925) The World of Touch. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum (Reprint 1989, Krueger LE, translator). Meftah E-M, Belingard L, and Chapman CE (2000) Relative effects of spatial and temporal characteristics of scanned surfaces on human perception of tactile roughness using passive touch. Experimental Brain Research 132: 351361. Miyaoka T, Mano T, and Ohka M (1999) Mechanisms of finesurface-texture discrimination in human tactile sensation. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 105: 24852492. Morley JW, Goodwin AW, and Darian-Smith I (1983) Tactile discrimination of gratings. Experimental Brain Research 49: 291299. Sathian K, Goodwin AW, John KT, and Darian-Smith I (1989) Perceived roughness of a grating: Correlation with responses of mechanoreceptive afferents innervating the monkeys fingerpad. Journal of Neuroscience 9: 12731279. Sinclair RJ and Burton H (1991) Neuronal activity in the primary somatosensory cortex in monkeys (Macaca mulatta) during active touch of textured surface gratings: Responses to groove width, applied force and velocity of motion. Journal of Neurophysiology 66: 153169. Smith AM, Chapman CE, Deslandes M, Langlais J-S, and Thibodeau M-P (2002) The role of friction and tangential force in the subjective scaling of tactile roughness. Experimental Brain Research 144: 211223. Tremblay F, Ageranioti-Be langer SA, and Chapman CE (1996) Cortical mechanisms underlying tactile discrimination in the monkey. I: Role of primary somatosensory cortex in passive texture discrimination. Journal of Neurophysiology 76: 33823403. Yoshioka T, Gibb B, Dorsch AK, Hsiao SS, and Johnson KO (2001) Neural coding mechanisms underlying perceived roughness of finely textured surfaces. Journal of Neuroscience 21: 69056918.

Further Reading
Blake DT, Hsiao SS, and Johnson KO (1997) Neural coding mechanisms in tactile pattern recognition: The relative contributions of slowly and rapidly adapting mechanoreceptors to perceived roughness. Journal of Neuroscience 17: 74807489. Cascio CJ and Sathian K (2001) Temporal cues contribute to tactile perception of roughness. Journal of Neuroscience 21: 52895296. Connor CE, Hsiao SS, Phillips JR, and Johnson KO (1990) Tactile roughness: Neural codes that account for psychophysical magnitude estimates. Journal of Neuroscience 10: 38233836. Hollins M and Risner SR (2000) Evidence for the duplex theory of tactile texture perception. Perception and Psychophysics 62: 695705. Jiang W, Tremblay F, and Chapman CE (1997) Neuronal encoding of texture changes in the primary and secondary somatosensory cortical areas of monkeys during passive texture discrimination. Journal of Neurophysiology 77: 16561662. Johnson KO and Hsiao SS (1992) Neural mechanisms of tactual form and texture perception. Annual Review of Neuroscience 15: 227250. Jones LA and Lederman SJ (2006) Human Hand Function. New York: Oxford University Press.