Somatosensory Temporal Discrimination Threshold Involves Inhibitory Mechanisms in the Primary Somatosensory Area.

Precise timing of sensory information is crucial for nearly every aspect of human perception and behavior. One way to assess the ability to analyze temporal information in the somatosensory domain is to measure the somatosensory temporal discrimination threshold (STDT), defined as the shortest time interval necessary for a pair of tactile stimuli to be perceived as separate. In this study, we found that STDT depends on inhibitory mechanisms within the primary somatosensory area (S1). This finding helps interpret the sensory processing deficits in neurological diseases, such as focal dystonia and Parkinson's disease, and possibly prompts future studies using neurostimulation techniques over S1 for therapeutic purposes in dystonic patients.