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The effect of indenting the skin at different rates on the perceived intensity of the stimulus was studied by indenting the skin of the fingertip with two triangular waveforms, given as a pair. The subjects were asked to judge which member of the pair was more intense. Perceived intensity was found to increase both with the depth and the speed of the indentation. In contrast, changes in the rate of skin indentation had little influence on perceived skin indentation depth. This suggests that intensity and depth are different attributes of tactile sensibility. Since the skin is viscous, a rapid indentation is more forceful than a slow indentation of the same depth, raising the possibility that perceived intensity is related to stimulus force. Even though intensity judgments were more closely correlated with the force of a stimulus than with the indentation it produced, a rapidly increasing force was felt as more intense than one that increased more slowly but attained the same final magnitude. When mechanoreceptors in the palmar aspect of the monkey's hand were excited with triangular stimuli like those used in the psychophysical studies, their discharge frequency increased with the rate of skin indentation. However, the receptors were distinctly more rate sensitive than the human judgments of stimulus intensity, suggesting that impulse summation in the central nervous system summates (integrates in the mathematical sense) the receptor input so as to enhance, relatively, the perceived intensity of the slower stimuli.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Psychophysical tests on human subjects showed that judgments of skin indentation depth made when the fingertip was indented at rates from 0.2 to 16 mm/sec were quite insensitive to changes in indentation velocity. Similar results were obtained on the forearm at indentation velocities of 0.4 to 16 mm/sec. Recordings were made from mechanoreceptors in the monkey's hand that were able to respond over the same range of velocities and at comparable depths to determine how skin indentation depth might be signaled (coded) at the receptor level and to examine the rate sensitivity of the possible depth codes. It was found that most of the receptors with foci under the stimulator were recruited relatively early during an indentation, especially at velocities of 1.6 mm/sec and higher, making it improbable that the full range of indentation depths is signaled by the “subsurface” recruitment of different receptors at different indentation depths. A subsurface recruitment code involving subcutaneous receptors is not likely since subjects could feel virtually none of the stimuli after skin anesthesia. Progressive recruitment with depth of receptors whose foci lie further and further away from the stimulator (“lateral” recruitment) was considered an unlikely depth code because changing the area of the stimulator had little effect on its perceived depth. Also, it was shown that subjects could sense the curvature of the indentation (the profile of the depth at right angles to the skin surface), which requires information about the depth of individual patches of skin beneath the stimulator. There is no obvious way that a lateral recruitment code can provide this information. Thus it is probable that the discharge rate of some or all of the receptors excited by the indentation is involved in indicating its depth. Both impulse frequency and receptor recruitment at any given depth increased as the velocity of the indentation increased. The demonstrated reliability of information about skin indentation depth in humans indicates that the central neural circuitry responsible for judgments of skin indentation depth is able to compensate for the rate-sensitive receptor signals.