Auditory clicks elicit equivalent temporal frequency perception to tactile pulses: A cross-modal psychophysical study

Abstract

Both hearing and touch are sensitive to the frequency of mechanical oscillations—sound waves and tactile vibrations, respectively. The mounting evidence of parallels in temporal frequency processing between the two sensory systems led us to directly address the question of perceptual frequency equivalence between touch and hearing using stimuli of simple and more complex temporal features. In a cross-modal psychophysical paradigm, subjects compared the perceived frequency of pulsatile mechanical vibrations to that elicited by pulsatile acoustic (click) trains, and vice versa. Non-invasive pulsatile stimulation designed to excite a fixed population of afferents was used to induce desired temporal spike trains at frequencies spanning flutter up to vibratory hum (>50 Hz). The cross-modal perceived frequency for regular test pulse trains of either modality was a close match to the presented stimulus physical frequency up to 100 Hz. We then tested whether the recently discovered “burst gap” temporal code for frequency, that is shared by the two senses, renders an equivalent cross-modal frequency perception. When subjects compared trains comprising pairs of pulses (bursts) in one modality against regular trains in the other, the cross-sensory equivalent perceptual frequency best corresponded to the silent interval between the successive bursts in both auditory and tactile test stimuli. These findings suggest that identical acoustic and vibrotactile pulse trains, regardless of pattern, elicit equivalent frequencies, and imply analogous temporal frequency computation strategies in both modalities. This perceptual correspondence raises the possibility of employing a cross-modal comparison as a robust standard to overcome the prevailing methodological limitations in psychophysical investigations and strongly encourages cross-modal approaches for transmitting sensory information such as translating pitch into a similar pattern of vibration on the skin.

Contribution of remote Pacinian corpuscles to flutter-range frequency discrimination in humans

“…A temporal coding mechanism based on spike timing has been previously proposed in studies involving both pulsatile mechanical stimuli 24,33 -where low-frequency flutter perceptions could be evoked with FA2 activation -and electrical stimuli 34,35 ; the latter demonstrated similar frequency coding mechanisms as mechanical studies, despite bypassing mechanoreceptors and activating all afferent classes nonselectively. Such a temporal coding scheme has also been recently suggested for auditory stimuli 36,37 .…”

Human Foot Outperforms the Hand in Mechanical Pain Discrimination

“…Curves were fitted to the data using a logistic function. The difference threshold or JND was taken as one-half the difference between the values of the comparison stimulus at the 75% and 25% points on the psychometric function ( Sharma et al, 2022 ). The Weber fraction, which represents the ratio of the JND to the standard stimulus, was then calculated for each site in each participant.…”

Multiplexing intensity and frequency sensations for artificial touch by modulating temporal features of electrical pulse trains

“…One technology to generate such temporal spiking patterns in peripheral afferents is by very fast mechanical pulses with durations comparable to an action potential ( Birznieks et al, 2019 ). For broader application in neural prosthetics ( Vickery et al, 2020 ), we have verified experimentally that the same coding scheme can be implemented using electrocutaneous stimulation ( Ng et al, 2020 , 2021 ) and auditory click stimulation ( Sharma et al, 2022a , 2022b ).…”