Taking the rough with the smooth: aging effects on tactile surface texture perception

粗糙与光滑：老化对触觉表面纹理感知的影响

• 批准号: BB/R003971/1
• 负责人: Alan Wing
• 金额: $ 101.88万
• 依托单位: University of Birmingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2018 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FR003971%2F1
• 关键词: Taking; rough; smooth; aging; effects

Over the course of a day most of us handle numerous items, grasping and manipulating them, at the same time running our hands and fingers over their surfaces. Sometimes we touch and handle objects that are fully visible in order to carry out a particular task, for instance, picking up money from a countertop. At other times we may seek to identify an object, or some part of it, by its shape or surface texture when it cannot be seen, for example, when trying to retrieve money in a wallet. The sensations evoked by touching surfaces (e.g. smooth vs. textured, soft vs. hard, sticky vs. slippery) and the effect of products that change the feel of touched objects (e.g. in washing dishes, fabrics, hair) can be key to their usability and commercial success. Despite the importance of surface feel, only now are we beginning to understand how humans explore surfaces, what is the physics of the interaction between finger and surface, what is the information that receptors in skin and muscles capture about surface texture, and how surface sensations are affected by multisensory signals. Recent neuroscientific studies, including research in our lab, indicate how, not only brain areas that respond to touch are involved in texture perception, but also regions that primarily process visual and auditory information contribute to texture perception, even in the absence of visual and auditory stimuli. These findings help our understanding of previous research showing that the feel of a touched surface can be influenced by concurrent sounds and images. Surface exploration is an active process that may involve static or dynamic touching with the finger tip pressing (e.g. to determine hardness or temperature) or sliding (e.g. to determine roughness or stickiness) over the surface. In either case, good control of finger tip movement (position and force) is required, along with suitable cognitive resources to define exploration strategies appropriate to the surface possibilities. Given a number of touch components, each liable to variability or 'noise', are involved in active touch for surface perception, this can lead to deterioration in overall performance if, as is likely, the noise increases with age. On the other hand, redundancy may contribute to substitution of one process for another (or a change in their relative weighting), which can reduce the impact of deterioration in one or more of the components. Aging touch is therefore of both theoretical and practical importance in understanding touch.In this project the Universities of Birmingham and Nottingham have come together with Procter & Gamble to understand how information from touch is actively generated, processed and combined with information from other senses (hearing, vision) and how these processes change later in life. Research into aging effects on perception has largely focused on vision and hearing. However, age-related changes in both peripheral and central aspects of touch have been observed. This project includes behavioural and brain imaging studies of active touch to develop a model of how information is actively sought and combined to sense texture and how these processes are adjusted to compensate for age-related changes. Furthermore the findings and model will be extended to a consumer product-testing environment to examine the effects of cleaning products on tactile surface perception. In summary, the ways in which we use active touch to perceive surface texture are not fully understood and the effects of aging are relatively unknown. The proposed project addresses these topics by detailing surface perception on a wide scale (ranging from smooth surfaces to relatively coarse surfaces made of gratings with lines spaced hundreds of microns apart and including naturally occurring and manufactured surfaces with various coatings affecting frictional resistance to sliding) using behavioural, brain imaging and modeling approaches in healthy young and aging populations.

在一天的过程中，我们大多数人都要处理许多物品，抓住和操纵它们，同时用手和手指在它们的表面上滑动。有时我们触摸和处理完全可见的物体，以执行特定的任务，例如，从台面上捡起钱。在其他时候，我们可能会试图通过物体的形状或表面纹理来识别物体或物体的某个部分，例如，当试图从钱包中取回钱时。由触摸表面引起的感觉（例如，光滑与纹理、软与硬、粘性与光滑）以及改变触摸物体的感觉的产品的效果（例如，在洗涤餐具、织物、头发时）可能是其可用性和商业成功的关键。尽管表面感觉很重要，但直到现在我们才开始了解人类如何探索表面，手指和表面之间的相互作用的物理原理是什么，皮肤和肌肉中的受体捕获的关于表面纹理的信息是什么，以及表面感觉如何受到多感官信号的影响。最近的神经科学研究，包括我们实验室的研究，表明不仅对触摸做出反应的大脑区域参与纹理感知，而且主要处理视觉和听觉信息的区域也有助于纹理感知，即使在没有视觉和听觉刺激的情况下。这些发现有助于我们理解先前的研究，即触摸表面的感觉会受到同时发生的声音和图像的影响。表面探测是一种主动过程，其可以涉及用指尖按压（例如，以确定硬度或温度）或在表面上滑动（例如，以确定粗糙度或粘性）的静态或动态触摸。在任何一种情况下，都需要对指尖运动（位置和力）进行良好的控制，沿着适当的认知资源来定义适合于表面可能性的探索策略。给定多个触摸组件，每个触摸组件易于变化或“噪声”，涉及用于表面感知的主动触摸，如果噪声随着年龄增加，则这可能导致整体性能的劣化。另一方面，冗余可能有助于用一个过程替代另一个过程（或改变它们的相对权重），这可以减少一个或多个组件中的劣化的影响。因此，老化的触觉在理解触觉方面具有理论和实践上的重要性。在这个项目中，伯明翰大学和诺丁汉大学与宝洁公司合作，了解触觉信息是如何积极地产生、处理和与其他感官（听觉、视觉）信息相结合的，以及这些过程在以后的生活中是如何变化的。关于衰老对感知的影响的研究主要集中在视觉和听觉上。然而，已经观察到触觉的外围和中心方面的年龄相关变化。该项目包括对主动触摸的行为和大脑成像研究，以开发一个模型，说明如何主动寻找信息并将其结合起来以感知纹理，以及如何调整这些过程以补偿与年龄相关的变化。此外，研究结果和模型将扩展到消费品测试环境，以检查清洁产品对触觉表面感知的影响。总之，我们使用主动触摸来感知表面纹理的方式尚未完全了解，衰老的影响也相对未知。拟议的项目通过在健康的年轻人和老年人群体中使用行为、大脑成像和建模方法详细描述大范围的表面感知（从光滑表面到由间隔数百微米的光栅制成的相对粗糙的表面，包括天然存在的和制造的表面，其具有影响滑动摩擦阻力的各种涂层）来解决这些主题。

项目成果

Skin and Mechanoreceptor Contribution to Tactile Input for Perception: A Review of Simulation Models.

• DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.862344
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: Frontiers in human neuroscience
• 影响因子: 2.9

The efficacy of a task model approach to ADL rehabilitation in stroke apraxia and action disorganisation syndrome: A randomised controlled trial.

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0264678
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: PloS one
• 影响因子: 3.7
• 作者: Howe J;Chua W;Sumner E;Drozdowska B;Laverick R;Bevins RL;Jean-Baptiste E;Russell M;Rotshtein P;Wing AM
• 通讯作者: Wing AM

PrendoSim: Proxy-Hand-Based Robot Grasp Generator

PrendoSim：基于代理手的机器人抓取生成器

• DOI: 10.5220/0010549800600068
• 发表时间: 2021
• 作者: Di Luca M

Somatosensory Research Methods

体感研究方法

• DOI: 10.1007/978-1-0716-3068-6_9
• 发表时间: 2023
• 作者: Merrick C