CODING OF INCREMENTAL CHANGES IN SKIN TEMPERATURE BY A POPULATION OF WARM FIBERS IN THE MONKEY - CORRELATION WITH INTENSITY DISCRIMINATION IN MAN

In the present study the human subject's capacity to resolve incremental changes in the intensity of a warming pulse applied to palmar skin was measured for a wide range of stimulus patterns. These data were correlated with the resolution of similar changes in the warming pulse by reconstructed warm-fiber populations. It was assumed that the warm-fiber populations innervating the palmar skin in man and the macaque are functionally similar. We examined the effects of the response measure, the size of the responding fiber population, and the type of integrative process used by the brain in the transfer of stimulus information. Those processes likely to be used by the brain in the particular discriminative task that we examined could be differentiated from processes, which in no circumstances could account for the observed intensity resolution.