Sensing with tools extends somatosensory processing beyond the body
Sensing with tools extends somatosensory processing beyond the body
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DOI：
10.1038/s41586-018-0460-0
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发表时间：
2018-09-13
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
Farne, Alessandro
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Miller, Luke E.;Montroni, Luca;Farne, Alessandro
在整个动物王国中，已经观察到将感官信息处理扩展到神经系统之外的能力（1）;例如，当啮齿动物使用胡须（2）和蜘蛛使用网（3）定位猎物时，可以触摸物体。我们研究了用工具感知物体的能力（4-9）是否代表了人类类似的信息处理机制。在这里，我们提供了来自行为心理物理学，结构力学和神经元建模的证据，这些证据表明，工具被神经系统视为身体的感官延伸，而不是手和环境之间的简单远端链接（10，11）。我们首先证明，工具用户可以准确地感觉到一个物体接触一根木棍，就像是可能在皮肤上。接下来，我们证明了冲击位置是由工具在冲击时的模态响应编码的，反映了机械信息处理的前神经元阶段，类似于用晶须（2）和网状物（3）进行感测。最后，我们使用触觉传入的计算模型（12）来证明撞击位置可以快速重新编码为时间上精确的尖峰代码。这个代码预测人类参与者的行为，提供证据表明，编码在图案中的信息塑造了定位。因此，我们表明，这种感觉能力来自信息处理的材料，生物力学和神经水平之间的功能耦合（13，14）。
The ability to extend sensory information processing beyond the nervous system(1) has been observed throughout the animal kingdom; for example, when rodents palpate objects using whiskers(2) and spiders localize prey using webs(3). We investigated whether the ability to sense objects with tools(4-9) represents an analogous information processing scheme in humans. Here we provide evidence from behavioural psychophysics, structural mechanics and neuronal modelling, which shows that tools are treated by the nervous system as sensory extensions of the body rather than as simple distal links between the hand and the environment(10,11). We first demonstrate that tool users can accurately sense where an object contacts a wooden rod, just as is possible on the skin. We next demonstrate that the impact location is encoded by the modal response of the tool upon impact, reflecting a pre-neuronal stage of mechanical information processing akin to sensing with whiskers(2) and webs(3). Lastly, we use a computational model of tactile afferents(12) to demonstrate that impact location can be rapidly re-encoded into a temporally precise spiking code. This code predicts the behaviour of human participants, providing evidence that the information encoded in motifs shapes localization. Thus, we show that this sensory capability emerges from the functional coupling between the material, biomechanical and neural levels of information processing(13,14).