Tactile discrimination is the ability to differentiate information through the sense of touch. The somatosensory system is the nervous system pathway that is responsible for this essential survival ability used in adaptation.[1] There are various types of tactile discrimination. One of the most well known and most researched is two-point discrimination, the ability to differentiate between two different tactile stimuli which are relatively close together.[2] Other types of discrimination like graphesthesia and spatial discrimination also exist but are not as extensively researched.[3] Tactile discrimination is something that can be stronger or weaker in different people and two major conditions, chronic pain and blindness, can affect it greatly. Blindness increases tactile discrimination abilities which is extremely helpful for tasks like reading braille.[4] In contrast, chronic pain conditions, like arthritis, decrease a person's tactile discrimination.[5] One other major application of tactile discrimination is in new prosthetics and robotics which attempt to mimic the abilities of the human hand. In this case tactile sensors function similarly to mechanoreceptors in a human hand to differentiate tactile stimuli.[6]
^"Principles of Neuroscience". principlesofneuroscience.com.
^two-point discrimination. (n.d.) McGraw-Hill Concise Dictionary of Modern Medicine. (2002). Retrieved March 16, 2018 from https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/two-point+discrimination
^Blumenfeld, H. (2010). 'Neuroanatomy Through Clinical Cases' (2nd Edition ed.). Sunderland, Massachusetts: Sinauer Associates Inc. http://www.neuroexam.com/neuroexam/content41.html.
^Lotfi, Merabet; Gregor, Thut; Brian, Murray; Jessica, Andrews; Steven, Hsiao; Alvaro, Pascual-Leone (2004). "Feeling by Sight or Seeing by Touch" (PDF). Neuron. 42 (1): 173–179. doi:10.1016/S0896-6273(04)00147-3. PMID 15066274. S2CID 2745837. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-04-09.
^Catley MJ; O'connell NE; Berryman C; Ayhan FF; Moseley GL (October 2014). "Is tactile acuity altered in people with chronic pain? a systematic review and meta-analysis". Journal of Pain. 15 (10): 985–1000. doi:10.1016/j.jpain.2014.06.009. hdl:2440/105059. PMID 24983492.
^S. Luo; J. Bimbo; R. Dahiya; H. Liu (December 2017). "Robotic tactile perception of object properties: A review". Mechatronics. 48: 54–67. arXiv:1711.03810. Bibcode:2017arXiv171103810L. doi:10.1016/j.mechatronics.2017.11.002. S2CID 24222234.
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high tactile acuity becomes more and more necessary. There are many types of tactile sensors used for different tasks. There are three types of tactile sensors...
K. O. (1 December 1994). "The limit of tactile spatial resolution in humans: Grating orientation discrimination at the lip, tongue, and finger". Neurology...
incorporate tactile sensors that measure forces exerted by the user on the interface. The word haptic, from the Greek: ἁπτικός (haptikos), means "tactile, pertaining...
Several studies indicate that type I fibres mediate high resolution tactilediscrimination, and are responsible for the ability of our finger tips to feel...
pilot. The most severe effects are pain, numbness, and loss of tactilediscrimination or dexterity.[citation needed] For a standard helicopter with a...
they feel during it. The absence of proprioception or two-point tactilediscrimination on one side of the body suggests injury to the contralateral side...
Wilimzig C; Tegenthoff M (July 2006). "Tactile coactivation resets age-related decline of human tactilediscrimination". Ann. Neurol. 60 (1): 88–94. doi:10...
tasks such as Braille reading, tactile perception, tactual object recognition, sound localization, and sound discrimination. This may suggest that blind...
specialised for this purpose, whereas other types of hair are coarser as tactile sensors. Although whiskers are specifically those found around the face...
their early age, blinded subjects developed strong motivations to tactilediscrimination tasks. May's early blindness benefited him so far; he developed...
etc. In humans, this sense, along with tactile spatial acuity, vibration perception, texture discrimination and proprioception, is mediated by the dorsal...
search field. Tactile perceptual learning has been demonstrated on spatial acuity tasks such as tactile grating orientation discrimination, and on vibrotactile...
peripheral nervous system sensitivities and can make the same tactilediscriminations. Subsequent research into neural processing has increasingly vindicated...
including the coast mole, which seems to play a critical role in tactilediscrimination and enables it to differentiate between prey items in an environment...
a device for measuring the tactile sensitivity of the skin (or mouth, or eye, etc.). The measure of the degree of tactile sensitivity is called aesthesiometry...
Clive D. L. (2002). "Quokkas (Setonix brachyurus) demonstrate tactilediscrimination learning and serial-reversal learning". Journal of Comparative Psychology...
and counting are not restricted to visual perception, but also extend to tactile perception, when observers had to name the number of stimulated fingertips...
communication needs of the species. These include physical, chemical, tactile, and vocal communication. Each method of communication utilizes various...
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