The speed of object recognition from a haptic glance: event-related potential evidence.
Recognition of an object usually involves a wide range of sensory inputs. Accumulating evidence shows that first brain responses associated with the visual discrimination of objects emerge around 150 ms, but fewer studies have been devoted to measure the first neural signature of haptic recognition. To investigate the speed of haptic processing, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) during a shape discrimination task without visual information. After a restricted exploratory procedure, participants (n = 27) were instructed to judge whether the touched object corresponded to an expected object whose name had been previously presented in a screen. We encountered that any incongruence between the presented word and the shape of the object evoked a frontocentral negativity starting at ∼175 ms. With the use of source analysis and L2 minimum-norm estimation, the neural sources of this differential activity were located in higher level somatosensory areas and prefrontal regions involved in error monitoring and cognitive control. Our findings reveal that the somatosensory system is able to complete an amount of haptic processing substantial enough to trigger conflict-related responses in medial and prefrontal cortices in <200 ms. The present results show that our haptic system is a fast recognition device closely interlinked with error- and conflict-monitoring processes.
Cognition and Brain Plasticity Group, Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL), L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain; Department of Basic Psychology, Campus Bellvitge, University of Barcelona, L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain; and.
Ane
A
Gurtubay-Antolin
Cognition and Brain Plasticity Group, Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL), L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain; Department of Basic Psychology, Campus Bellvitge, University of Barcelona, L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain; and.
Borja
B
Rodriguez-Herreros
Cognition and Brain Plasticity Group, Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL), L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain; Department of Basic Psychology, Campus Bellvitge, University of Barcelona, L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain; and Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies, Barcelona, Spain antoni.rodriguez@icrea.cat.
Antoni
A
Rodríguez-Fornells
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D013003:Somatosensory Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D014110:Touch / Q000502:physiology*; D055698:Touch Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
error monitoring; event-related potentials; haptic object recognition; haptics; tactile object recognition