The vision of Hsiao on somatosensation.

The goal of this review is to start to consolidate and distill the substantial body of research that comprises the published work of the late Professor Steven S. Hsiao. The studies of Hsiao began by demonstrating the receptive field properties of somatosensory neurons, progressed to describing cortical feature selectivity, and then eventually elevated the field to hopes of tapping into natural neural codes with artificial somatosensory feedback.

Speed invariance of independent control of finger movements in pianists.

Independent control of finger movements characterizes skilled motor behaviors such as tool use and musical performance. The purpose of the present study was to identify the effect of movement frequency (tempo) on individuated finger movements in piano playing. Joint motion at the digits was recorded while 5 expert pianists were playing 30 excerpts from musical pieces with different fingering and key locations either at a predetermined normal tempo or as fast as possible.

Hand kinematics of piano playing.

Dexterous use of the hand represents a sophisticated sensorimotor function. In behaviors such as playing the piano, it can involve strong temporal and spatial constraints. The purpose of this study was to determine fundamental patterns of covariation of motion across joints and digits of the human hand.

Multiple Factors Underlying Haptic Perception of Length and Orientation.

Information about the shape and spatial orientation of an object can be gathered during exploratory hand and arm movements, and then must be synthesized into a unified percept. During the robotically guided exploration of virtual polygons or triangles, the perception of the lengths of two adjoining segments is not always geometrically consistent with the perception of the internal angles between these segments. The present study further characterized this established inconsistency, and also found that subjects' internal angle judgments were influenced by the spatial orientations of the segments, especially the segment that was explored last in the sequence.

Spatial and temporal aspects of cognitive influences on smooth pursuit.

It is well known that prediction is used to overcome processing delays within the motor system and ocular control is no exception. Motion extrapolation is one mechanism that can be used to overcome the visual processing delay. Expectations based on previous experience or cognitive cues are also capable of overcoming this delay.