Being proposed is a research project to investigate the effects of aging on the sense of touch. The project has a twofold purpose: 1) to bring our understanding of the effects of aging on touch up to our level of understanding of the senses of vision and hearing; and 2) for the practical reason that as we age sensory deficits in hearing create serious problems in understanding speech. Our experiments are designed to study those factors of cutaneous sensation that will lead to an effective means of utilizing the skin as a communication channel for enhancing the perception of speech. The specific experiments focus on the effects of aging on: 1) the effects of aging on absolute vibrotactile sensitivity of each of the four mechanoreceptive channels in glabrous and hairy skin; 2) the effects of aging on spatial and temporal summation in the detection of vibrotactile stimuli with an objective of examining tactile sensory systems at a central level of the nervous system; 3) the effects of aging on vibrotactile subjective magnitude and its rate of growth as a function of stimulus intensity; and 4) the effects of aging on vibrotactile temporal acuity as measured by the modulation transfer function, forward masking, and subjective duration of stimulation. The parameters to be studied have been selected for their importance to touch sensations and in the perception of speech.
| Gescheider, G A; Edwards, R R; Lackner, E A et al. (1996) The effects of aging on information-processing channels in the sense of touch: III. Differential sensitivity to changes in stimulus intensity. Somatosens Mot Res 13:73-80 |
| Gescheider, G A; Beiles, E J; Checkosky, C M et al. (1994) The effects of aging on information-processing channels in the sense of touch: II. Temporal summation in the P channel. Somatosens Mot Res 11:359-65 |
| Gescheider, G A; Hoffman, K E; Harrison, M A et al. (1994) The effects of masking on vibrotactile temporal summation in the detection of sinusoidal and noise signals. J Acoust Soc Am 95:1006-16 |
| Gescheider, G A; Bolanowski, S J; Hall, K L et al. (1994) The effects of aging on information-processing channels in the sense of touch: I. Absolute sensitivity. Somatosens Mot Res 11:345-57 |
| Gescheider, G A; Valetutti Jr, A A; Padula, M C et al. (1992) Vibrotactile forward masking as a function of age. J Acoust Soc Am 91:1690-6 |
