Task Influences on Peripheral Unit Activity and Somatosensory Evoked Potentials

Responses of human mechanoreceptors along with somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) to short tactile pulses during two different tasks - magnitude estimation, and counting of tones while the same tactile stimuli were presented simultaneously, were studied. Differences in the peripheral responses and in the SEPs, the latter even more distinct, were observed between the two tasks. It is suggested that there are no automatically physiological processes - not even in the peripherie.