Human skin contains receptors that inform the brain about mechanical stimuli.
These EEG results reflect the delivery of synchronous and focal afferent drive to the cortex, and raise the question whether haemodynamic responses can also be observed under similar stimulus conditions. Here we answer that question in the affirmative. Preliminary testing was also carried out to measure possible heating effects of induced currents on the electrode tip. The vibrotactile stimulus was applied for an 'ON' period of 8 seconds, followed by a resting 'OFF' period of 24 seconds repeated for a total of 20 cycles. Image data was temporally smoothed, by convolving the fMRI time series with a Gaussian of 3 s full width at half maximum and high pass filtered.