Multiple Spatial Spectral Components of Static Skin Deformation for Predicting Macroscopic Roughness Perception

A previous study suggested a relationship between the spatial spectrum of finger pad skin deformation and perception of macroscopic roughness features. This study tested a new hypothesis that macroscopic roughness perception is the result of a weighted linear combination of multiple spatial spectral components of skin deformation. Experiments were conducted by capturing close-up images of finger pad deformation while the pads were pushed onto specimens with macroscopic features. Additionally, the roughness perceptions of these specimens were collected using a magnitude estimation method. The combination of spectral components predicted the roughness perception more accurately than any single spectral component. This suggests that roughness perception is mediated by multiple Gabor filter-like neural systems with different spatial periods, such as visual perception.