Changes in Somatosensory Responsiveness in Behaving Primates
Abstract
The four specific goals of the research conducted were: 1) to train monkeys to perform sensory-triggered wrist movement tasks in preparation for electrophysiological recording and to study their reaction times for visually vs. vibratory-triggered movements; 2) to record from the cerebral cortex of awake, behaving monkeys during the performance of these sensory-triggered wrist movement tasks; 3) to analyze data obtained from electrophysiological and behavioral recording to better understand the occurrence of sensory gating during the execution of stereotyped behaviors; 4) to train human subjects to perform the same tasks as those require of the monkeys to determine the differences in human reaction times for hand movements made in response to visual and vibratory cues so that the human results could be compared with the monkey data. We have determined that: 1) The premovement activity that occurs in primary somatosensory cortical neurons differs in timing and magnitude, depending upon the type of sensory cue used to trigger hand movements. 2) The magnitude of the premovement activity during vibratory-cued trials is related to how responsive a given neuron is to vibratory stimuli. 3) Humans and monkeys make hand movements more quickly in response to vibratory as compared with visual go cues. Our main goal was to better understand the performance limitations imposed by the nervous system on subjects that are required to control devices by responding to sensory cues with appropriate corrective and/or controlled hand movements. Keywords: Changes in sensory responsiveness; Response gating; Human and primate reaction times; Visual and vibratory cues.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 1988
- Accession Number
- ADA198792
Entities
People
- Randall J. Nelson
Organizations
- University of Tennessee