Touch and Hearing Mediate Osseoperception

Osseoperception is the sensation arising from the mechanical stimulation of a bone-anchored prosthesis. Here we show that not only touch, but also hearing is involved in this phenomenon. Using mechanical vibrations ranging from 0.1 to 6 kHz, we performed four psychophysical measures (perception threshold, sensation discrimination, frequency discrimination and reaction time) on 12 upper and lower limb amputees and found that subjects: consistently reported perceiving a sound when the stimulus was delivered at frequencies equal to or above 400 Hz; were able to discriminate frequency differences between stimuli delivered at high stimulation frequencies (~1500 Hz); improved their reaction time for bimodal stimuli (i.e. when both vibration and sound were perceived). Our results demonstrate that osseoperception is a multisensory perception, which can explain the improved environment perception of bone-anchored prosthesis users. This phenomenon might be exploited in novel prosthetic devices to enhance their control, thus ultimately improving the amputees’ quality of life.