Digging up von Békésy: Funneling of touches around the body
Lisa Marie Pritchett, Laurence R Harris

Last modified: 2011-09-02

Abstract


We investigated a technique that can be used to place tactile stimuli on a continuum between two points using two tactors placed several centimeters apart. As von Békésy first described in 1959, when two pieces of skin several centimeters apart are simultaneously stimulated, a single touch is perceived at an intermediate location. When the relative intensity of the vibration of the two tactors is slowly adjusted from 1:0 to 0:1 a sensation is created of a touch moving across the skin. This has come to be known as the funneling illusion. We have characterized the funneling illusion on a variety of body parts including the hand, arm, wrist, head, torso, and legs. We show that the illusion is robust to a variety of vibration parameters, and demonstrate how it may be used for within modality touch discrimination and adjustment procedures.

References


von Békésy, G. (1959). Neural funneling along the skin and between the inner and outer hair cells of the cochlea. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 31, 1236. doi:10.1121/1.1907851

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