Differential width discrimination task for active and passive tactile discrimination in humans

The neurophysiological basis of width discrimination has been extensively studied in rodents and has shown that active and passive tactile discrimination engage fundamentally different neural networks. Although previous studies have analyzed active and passive tactile processing in humans, little is known about the neurophysiological basis of width discrimination in humans. Here we present a width discrimination task for humans that reproduces the main features of the width discrimination task previously developed for rodents. The task required subjects to actively or passively sample two movable bars forming a “narrow” or “wide” aperture. Subjects were then required to press one of two buttons to indicate if the bar width was “narrow” or “wide”. Behavioral testing showed that subjects were capable of discriminating between wide or narrow apertures up to distances of 0.1 cm. Electroencephalography (EEG) recordings further suggested distinct topographic maps for active and passive versions of the task during the period associated with the aperture discrimination. These results indicate that the Human Differential Width Discrimination Task is a valuable tool to describe the behavioral characteristics and neurophysiological basis of tactile processing. • Active and passive width discrimination has been extensively studied in rodents but not in humans. • Human subjects were capable of discriminating aperture widths of 0.1 cm. • Electroencephalography recordings showed that active and passive versions of the task were associated with different topographic maps.