Active tactile discrimination is coupled with and modulated by the cardiac cycle

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Abstract

Perception and cognition are modulated by the phase of the cardiac signal in which the stimuli are presented. This has been shown by locking the presentation of stimuli to distinct cardiac phases. However, in everyday life sensory information is not presented in this passive and phase-locked manner, instead we actively move and control our sensors to perceive the world. Whether active sensing is coupled and modulated with the cardiac cycle remains largely unknown. Here we recorded the electrocardiograms of human participants while they actively performed a tactile grating orientation task. We show that the duration of subjects' touch varied as a function of the cardiac phase in which they initiated it. Touches initiated in the systole phase were held for longer periods of time than touches initiated in the diastole phase. This effect was most pronounced when elongating the duration of the touches to sense the most difficult gratings. Conversely, while touches in the control condition were coupled to the cardiac cycle, their length did not vary as a function of the phase in which these were initiated. Our results reveal that we actively spend more time sensing during systole periods, the cardiac phase associated with lower perceptual sensitivity (vs. diastole). In line with interoceptive inference accounts, these results indicate that we actively adjust the acquisition of sense data to our internal bodily cycles.

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All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting file; Source Data files have been provided for all figures in OSF repository: https://osf.io/d7x3g/

Article and author information

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Alejandro Galvez-Pol

Psychology Department, University of the Balearic Islands, Palma de Mallorca, Spain

For correspondence
a.galvez-pol@uib.es

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-4430-8336
Pavandeep Virdee

Department of Clinical and Movement Neurosciences, University College London, London, United Kingdom

For correspondence
pavandeep.virdee.16@ucl.ac.uk

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Javier Villacampa

Psychology Department, University of the Balearic Islands, Palma de Mallorca, Spain

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-9971-9004
James Kilner

Department of Clinical and Movement Neurosciences, University College London, London, United Kingdom

For correspondence
j.kilner@ucl.ac.uk

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Funding

Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2016-120)

James Kilner

Autonomus Community of the Balearic Islands, Postdoctoral Grant Margalida Comas (PD/036/2019)

Alejandro Galvez-Pol

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: All participants volunteered to take part in the experiment, gave informed consent, and were reimbursed for the participation. Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the University College London research ethics committee ID 10857/002

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.