Auditory sensory memory indexed by mismatch negativity has been broadly studied over the past century, but far less attention has been directed to tactile sensory memory. To investigate whether tactile sensory memory is affected by attention, we recorded somatosensory mismatch negativity (sMMN) from 24 healthy adults in two experiments to distinguish sustained attention from non-sustained attention. Using the roving somatosensory oddball paradigm, we analyzed the average dynamic changes in the amplitude and latency of sMMN amplitude and found a clear sMMN component at the central region at a 100–300 ms interval. The sMMN amplitude, which indexes the early detection of tactile stimuli with the sensory memory trace, was larger in the tactile attentional task. Additionally, the sMMN latency increased with the increasing visual attentional load, which indicates a decay of tactile sensory memory. Our results indicate that the more attention resources are allocated for a tactile sensation, the more favorable it is to the generation of tactile sensory memory.

中文翻译：

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视觉注意负荷对体感失配负性指数触觉感觉记忆的影响

在过去的一个世纪里，由失配负性索引的听觉感官记忆得到了广泛的研究，但对触觉感官记忆的关注却少得多。为了研究触觉感官记忆是否受注意力影响，我们在两个实验中记录了 24 名健康成年人的体感错配负性 (sMMN)，以区分持续关注和非持续关注。使用流动体感古怪范式，我们分析了 sMMN 幅度和潜伏期的平均动态变化，并在中心区域以 100-300 ms 的间隔发现了清晰的 sMMN 分量。在触觉注意任务中，sMMN 幅度较大，它用感官记忆痕迹对触觉刺激的早期检测进行索引。此外，sMMN 延迟随着视觉注意力负荷的增加而增加，这表明触觉感官记忆的衰退。我们的结果表明，分配给触觉的注意力资源越多，就越有利于触觉记忆的产生。