Scholarpedia of Touch
Scholarpedia’s Encyclopedia of Touch provides a comprehensive collection of peer-reviewed articles written by leading researchers, detailing our current scientific understanding of tactile sensing and its neural substrates in animals including humans. The
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Tony J. Prescott Ehud Ahissar Eugene Izhikevich Editors
Scholarpedia of Touch
Scholarpedia Series editor Eugene Izhikevich, San Diego, USA
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13574
Tony J. Prescott Ehud Ahissar Eugene Izhikevich •
Editors
Scholarpedia of Touch
Editors Tony J. Prescott Department of Psychology University of Sheffield Sheffield UK
Eugene Izhikevich Brain Corporation San Diego, CA USA
Ehud Ahissar Department of Neurobiology Weizmann Institute of Science Rehovot Israel
Scholarpedia ISBN 978-94-6239-132-1 DOI 10.2991/978-94-6239-133-8
ISBN 978-94-6239-133-8
(eBook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015948155 © Atlantis Press and the author(s) 2016 This book, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced for commercial purposes in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system known or to be invented, without prior permission from the Publisher. Printed on acid-free paper
Preface
Touch is the ability to understand the world through physical contact. The noun “touch” and the verb “to touch” derive from the Old French verb “tochier”. Touch perception is also described by the adjectives tactile, from the Latin “tactilis”, and haptic, from the Greek “haptόs”. Academic research concerned with touch is also often described as haptics. The aim of Scholarpedia of Touch, first published by Scholarpedia (www. scholarpedia.org), is to provide a comprehensive set of articles, written by leading researchers and peer reviewed by fellow scientists, detailing the current scientific understanding of the sense of touch and of its neural substrates in animals including humans. It is hoped that the encyclopedia will encourage sharing of ideas and insights between researchers working on different aspects of touch in different species, including research in synthetic touch systems. In addition, it is hoped that the encyclopedia will raise awareness about research in tactile sensing and promote increased scientific and public interest in the field. Our encyclopedia assembles a state-of-the-art understanding of the sense of touch across a broad range of species from invertebrates such as stick insects and spiders, terrestrial and marine mammals, through to humans. The different contributions show not only the varieties of touch—antennae, whiskers, fingertips—but also their commonalities. They explore how touch sensing has evolved in different animal lineages, how it serves to provide rapid and reliable cues for controlling ongoing behaviour, how it develops, and how it can disintegrate when our brains begin to fail. In addition to analysing natural touch, we also consider how engineering is beginning to exploit physical analogues of these biological systems so as to endow robots, and other engineered artefacts, with rich tactile sensing capabilities.
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Preface
Scope and Structure Following an introductory chapter—The World of Touch—our encyclopedia is structured into four parts: • Compara
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