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To investigate whether implicit detection occurs uniformly during change blindness with single or combination feature stimuli, and whether implicit detection is affected by exposure duration and delay, two one-shot change detection experiments are designed. The implicit detection effect is measured by comparing the reaction times (RTs) of baseline trials, in which stimulus exhibits no change and participants report “same,” and change blindness trials, in which the stimulus exhibits a change but participants report “same.” If the RTs of blindness trials are longer than those of baseline trials, implicit detection has occurred. The strength of the implicit detection effect was measured by the difference in RTs between the baseline and change blindness trials, where the larger the difference, the stronger the implicit detection effect. In both Experiments 1 and 2, the results showed that the RTs of change blindness trials were significantly longer than those of baseline trials. Whether under set size 4, 6, or 8, the RTs of the change blindness trials were significantly longer than those in the baseline trials. In Experiment 1, the difference between the baseline trials’ RTs and change blindness trials’ RTs of the single features was significantly larger than that of the combination features. However, in Experiment 2, the difference between the baseline trials’ RTs and the change blindness trials’ RTs of single features was significantly smaller than that of the combination features. In Experiment 1a, when the exposure duration was shorter, the difference between the baseline and change blindness trials’ RTs was smaller. In Experiment 2, when the delay was longer, the difference between the two trials’ RTs was larger. These results suggest that regardless of whether the change occurs in a single or a combination of features and whether there is a long exposure duration or delay, implicit detection occurs uniformly during the change blindness period. Moreover, longer exposure durations and delays strengthen the implicit detection effect. Set sizes had no significant impact on implicit detection.

The primary somatosensory (S1) cortex plays an important role in the perception and discrimination of touch and pain mechanosensations. Conventionally, neurons in the somatosensory system including S1 cortex have been classified into low/high threshold (HT; non-nociceptive/nociceptive) or wide dynamic range (WDR; convergent) neurons by their electrophysiological responses to innocuous brush-stroke and noxious forceps-pinch stimuli. Besides this “noxiousness” (innocuous/noxious) feature, each stimulus also includes other stimulus features: “texture” (brush hairs/forceps-steel arm), “dynamics” (dynamic stroke/static press) and “intensity” (weak/strong). However, it remains unknown how S1 neurons inclusively process such diverse features of brushing and pinch at the single-cell and population levels. Using in vivo two-photon Ca2+ imaging in the layer 2/3 neurons of the mouse S1 cortex, we identified clearly separated response patterns of the S1 neural population with distinct tuning properties of individual cells to texture, dynamics and noxiousness features of cutaneous mechanical stimuli. Among cells other than broadly tuned neurons, the majority of the cells showed a highly selective response to the difference in texture, but low selectivity to the difference in dynamics or noxiousness. Between the two low selectivity features, the difference in dynamics was slightly more specific, yet both could be decoded using the response patterns of neural populations. In addition, more neurons are recruited and stronger Ca2+ responses are evoked as the intensity of forceps-pinch is gradually increased. Our results suggest that S1 neurons encode various features of mechanosensations with feature-dependent differential selectivity of single cells and distributed response patterns of populations. Moreover, we raise a caution about describing neurons by a single stimulus feature ignoring other aspects of the sensory stimuli.