Relevant Stimuli and their Relationships to Primate SA-I Mechanoreceptive Responses under Static Sinusoidal Indentation

The key event in tactile sense about an object in contact with the skin surface is how the stress and strain subjected to the mechanical loading are transduced into neural impulses by the mechanorecptors within the skin. In order to investigate the mechanism of transduction by the mechanoreceptors, a biomechanically validated three-dimensional finite element model for primate fingertips was used to simulate neurophysiological experiments involving static indentations by sinusoidal objects. Altogether, eighteen mechanical invariants were obtained from the computed stress and strain components at nine receptor locations. Further investigation has been done to study the influence of external load, size of the indentor and vertical location of the mechanoreceptors on the spatial response profiles.