Figure 5. Temporal precision and repeatability are hallmarks of both whisker and fingertip mechanoreceptors.

A| Responses evoked in primary afferents by repeated presentations of the same mechanical noise stimulus delivered to a whisker. The response is temporally patterned and highly repeatable. The same phenomenon is observed when analogous stimuli are delivered to the skin of macaque monkeys. Reproduced from Jones et al., 2004. B| Responses of a PC fiber to repeated presentations of a finely textured fabric. Left: Laser microscope image of the texture. Middle: Spiking response over 40 repeated presentations Right: Power spectra of the neuronal responses. When textures are scanned across the skin, PC fibers produce texture-specific temporal spiking patterns. Modified from Weber et al. (2013).