Spatial frequency tuning in cutaneous type I receptors

The encoder characteristics of cat, hairy skin, slowly adapting Type I (T1) receptors were studied by activating them with swept period grating stimuli drawn over the skin´s surface. It was hypothesized that the puncate organization of these receptors and the possibility of action potentials from one dome blocking the responses from other domes would result in a receptor behaving as a matched filter to specific periods of a grating stimulus. Laboratory experiment and preliminary numerical modeling results of receptor responses that support the matched-filter hypothesis are presented