Response of Pacinian corpuscles to sinusoidal vibration

Some characteristics of tactile channels

“…The duplex theory of mechanoreception was supported by neurophysiological data obtained by recording from cutaneous nerve fibers. Verrillo [24], in comparing his psychophysical threshold data with the neurophysiological tuning curves of Sato [19] for single Pacinian corpuscles in cat, discovered that it was this receptor that was the neural element mediating the U-shaped portion of the psychophysical threshold function. The neural element mediating detection of vibration at lower frequencies was subsequently identified as rapidly adapting nerve fibers associated with Meissner corpuscles [15,20].…”

Effect of stimulus frequency on subjective vibrotactile magnitude functions

“…As an example, removing the surround increases the number of receptors activated by the stimulus, which, in turn, results in a lowered threshold and a flatter magnitude function. On the other hand, changing the frequency from 60 to 250 Hz lowers the threshold, a receptor characteristic (Sato, 1961;Verrillo, 1966a, b), but does not alter the slope of the subjective-magnitude curve when a surround is used. The change in slope that occurs when the surround is absent is discussed in the following section.…”

Effect of tactile stimulation pulse characteristics on sensation threshold and power consumption

“…3 was performed in order to detect statistically the effect of variations in the values of duty cycle and number of pulses per burst. ANOVA analysis (analysis of variance) for repeated measurements shows no significant difference in sensitivity among the four different values (9,10,11,12) of NPB (p = 0.0689) while it is strongly significant with respect to the effect of changes in the DC (p < 0.001). Similarly, there is no significant difference in power among the NPB (p > 0.05) while it is significant with respect to the effect of change in DC (p < 0.001).…”

“…Sato (11), in his study on the response of the PCs to sinusoidal vibrations (tactile stimuli), reported that at 37~ the low threshold optimal frequency is approximately 300 Hz. Some years later, Verrillo (12), exciting the skin with mechanical vibrations (sinusoidal waveforms), found that the minimum threshold for tactile sensation is reached at a vibration frequency of 250 Hz.…”