Fig. 5.

Neurons in somatosensory cortex encode textural features at different spatial scales. (A) Spiking responses of seven SA1-like neurons (green; cells with SA1 regression coefficient > 0.5, n = 53) and seven PC-like neurons (orange; cells with PC regression coefficient > 0.5, n = 23) in response to five repeated presentations of three different textures: dots spaced 7.7 mm apart, a 1-mm-period grating, and a superposition of the dots with the grating. SA1-like responses exhibit strong entrainment to the coarse component of the texture (dot pattern). PC-like cells are more strongly driven by the fine component of the texture (grating). (B) Mean amplitude spectrum of the spiking responses of SA1-like (green) and PC-like (orange) cells to the same three textures as in A. PC-like cells exhibit high-frequency phase-locking to the temporal period of the grating (80 Hz), even when the dots are present, whereas SA1-like cells do not. (C) Discriminability (d′) of nine 3D-printed textures based on the firing rates they evoke in SA1- and PC-like neurons (green and orange, respectively). Error bars denote the bootstrapped SEMs across cells and texture pairs. While PC-like cells are sensitive to both coarse and fine features, SA1-like cells are sensitive only to coarse ones.