Tactile Pressure Evokes a Biphasic BOLD Response in Ipsilateral Primary Somatosensory Cortex

Tactile perception is fundamental to how we engage with and interpret our surroundings. While the contralateral primary somatosensory cortex (S1) is thought to be generally responsible for processing tactile information, simultaneous responses in the ipsi-lateral hemisphere have been observed. This work aims to characterize the blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) response pattern of ipsilateral S1 to unilateral tactile stimuli. In this study, tactile stimuli were applied using a custom pneumatically actuated stimulator designed and built in house (KalantaryArdebily et al., 2024). Three stimulus force levels were applied in an event-related design. As expected we observed an apparent difference in BOLD responses between the contralateral and ipsilateral hemispheres. We found differing response patterns between the Brodmann’s areas (BA) within ipsilateral S1. Ipsilateral BA2 had a positive BOLD response similar to that of the contralateral hemisphere. In contrast, ipsilateral BA1 and BA3b appeared to have a biphasic response. That is, those regions had an initial negative response, followed by a secondary positive one. Using multi-echo analysis, we verified that this biphasic response pattern is BOLD-related. In addition, the secondary (positive) phase was more sensitive to tactile stimulus force than the initial “negative” BOLD phase. The ipsilateral BA1 and BA3b responses support a previous hypothesis of bilateral sensory gating (Blatow et al., 2007; Chung et al., 2014; Hämäläinen et al., 2000; Kastrup et al., 2008; Klingner et al., 2016; Schäfer et al., 2012; Tamè et al., 2015). This study extends previous research reporting negative responses in ipsilateral S1, suggesting that the response is BOLD-related, biphasic, and that the previously overlooked secondary positive phase is actually more sensitive to stimulus intensity.