TY - JOUR
T1 - Neural Categorization of Vibrotactile Frequency in Flutter and Vibration Stimulations
T2 - An fMRI Study
AU - Kim, Junsuk
AU - Chung, Yoon Gi
AU - Chung, Soon Cheol
AU - Bulthoff, Heinrich H.
AU - Kim, Sung Phil
N1 - Funding Information:
National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Ministry of Education (2016R1A6A3A03006400).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2008-2011 IEEE.
PY - 2016/10/1
Y1 - 2016/10/1
N2 - As the use of wearable haptic devices with vibrating alert features is commonplace, an understanding of the perceptual categorization of vibrotactile frequencies has become important. This understanding can be substantially enhanced by unveiling how neural activity represents vibrotactile frequency information. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), this study investigated categorical clustering patterns of the frequency-dependent neural activity evoked by vibrotactile stimuli with gradually changing frequencies from 20 to 200 Hz. First, a searchlight multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) was used to find brain regions exhibiting neural activities associated with frequency information. We found that the contralateral postcentral gyrus (S1) and the supramarginal gyrus (SMG) carried frequency-dependent information. Next, we applied multidimensional scaling (MDS) to find low-dimensional neural representations of different frequencies obtained from the multi-voxel activity patterns within these regions. The clustering analysis on the MDS results showed that neural activity patterns of 20-100 Hz and 120-200 Hz were divided into two distinct groups. Interestingly, this neural grouping conformed to the perceptual frequency categories found in the previous behavioral studies. Our findings therefore suggest that neural activity patterns in the somatosensory cortical regions may provide a neural basis for the perceptual categorization of vibrotactile frequency.
AB - As the use of wearable haptic devices with vibrating alert features is commonplace, an understanding of the perceptual categorization of vibrotactile frequencies has become important. This understanding can be substantially enhanced by unveiling how neural activity represents vibrotactile frequency information. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), this study investigated categorical clustering patterns of the frequency-dependent neural activity evoked by vibrotactile stimuli with gradually changing frequencies from 20 to 200 Hz. First, a searchlight multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) was used to find brain regions exhibiting neural activities associated with frequency information. We found that the contralateral postcentral gyrus (S1) and the supramarginal gyrus (SMG) carried frequency-dependent information. Next, we applied multidimensional scaling (MDS) to find low-dimensional neural representations of different frequencies obtained from the multi-voxel activity patterns within these regions. The clustering analysis on the MDS results showed that neural activity patterns of 20-100 Hz and 120-200 Hz were divided into two distinct groups. Interestingly, this neural grouping conformed to the perceptual frequency categories found in the previous behavioral studies. Our findings therefore suggest that neural activity patterns in the somatosensory cortical regions may provide a neural basis for the perceptual categorization of vibrotactile frequency.
KW - Vibrotactile frequency
KW - functional magnetic resonance imaging
KW - multi-voxel pattern analysis
KW - neural categorization
KW - somatosensory cortex
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85007475124&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/TOH.2016.2593727
DO - 10.1109/TOH.2016.2593727
M3 - Article
C2 - 27479977
AN - SCOPUS:85007475124
VL - 9
SP - 455
EP - 464
JO - IEEE Transactions on Haptics
JF - IEEE Transactions on Haptics
SN - 1939-1412
IS - 4
M1 - 7523424
ER -