Somatotopic distortion of tactile temporal interval estimation

Tactile timing mechanism, which is essential for an accurate response to the external environment, has to compensate for the distortions of neural timing signals specifically, signals that come from distributed peripheral receptors and body parts, which move dynamically in space. Since an accurate visual timing encoding lacks precision when two widely separated photoreceptors are used, we studied how tactile timing is encoded in relation to two distances-somatotopic representation, defined by cortical topography, and spatiotopic representation, defined in the physical world. We conducted one-second tactile-interval estimation experiments in which the spatial distances of the two stimuli were systematically manipulated in somatotopic and spatiotopic representations, and then, we compared the two. Our results showed that somatotopic nerve distance-and not real-world physical distance-plays a dominant role in tactile timing estimations.