Rapid displacements of the skin lack clear positional information.
Rapid skin indentations can produce strong tap-like sensations that contain little information about skin indentation depth. Although slower stimuli produce weaker sensations, subjects can more accurately identify how the position of the skin surface changes with respect to the deeper tissues. This dissociation between intensity and depth information suggests that intensity and depth are served by different neural circuits.
D006801:Humans; D011601:Psychophysics; D011984:Sensory Receptor Cells / Q000502:physiology*; D012867:Skin / Q000294:innervation*; D014110:Touch / Q000502:physiology*