Dr Hannes Saal
Department of Psychology
Senior Lecturer
h.saal@sheffield.ac.uk
F05, Pam Liversidge Building
Full contact details
Dr Hannes Saal
Department of Psychology
F05
Pam Liversidge Building
Mappin Street
Sheffield
S1 3JD
Department of Psychology
F05
Pam Liversidge Building
Mappin Street
Sheffield
S1 3JD
- Qualifications
-
- BSc Cognitive Science (Osnabrueck, Germany)
- MSc Neuroinformatics (Edinburgh)
- PhD Neuroinformatics (Edinburgh)
- Research interests
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I work on mathematical models of sensory coding and perception; my main research area is the sense of touch, where I use human psychophysics, computational modeling, and applied machine learning in order to elucidate the fundamental computations allowing us to make sense of our environment through touch.
I am a member of Sheffield Robotics and INSIGNEO Institute for in silico Medicine. I direct the Active Touch Laboratory.
Software
TouchSim is a Matlab package that simulates spiking responses from thousands of tactile afferents terminating on the palmar surface of the hand to arbitrary indentation of the skin (see Saal, Delhaye et al., PNAS, 2017 for details).
- Publications
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Show: Featured publications All publications
Featured publications
Journal articles
- Modelling foot sole cutaneous afferents: FootSim. iScience.
- Population coding strategies in human tactile afferents. PLoS Computational Biology, 18(12).
- Expansion and contraction of resource allocation in sensory bottlenecks. eLife, 11. View this article in WRRO
- Malleability of the cortical hand map following a finger nerve block. Science Advances, 8(16).
- Tactile innervation densities across the whole body. Journal of Neurophysiology.
- Speed invariance of tactile texture perception. Journal of Neurophysiology, jn.00161.2017-jn.00161.2017. View this article in WRRO
- Simulating tactile signals from the whole hand with millisecond precision. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA, 114(28), E5693-E5702. View this article in WRRO
- The neural basis of perceived intensity in natural and artificial touch. Science Translational Medicine, 8(362). View this article in WRRO
- Importance of spike timing in touch: an analogy with hearing?. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 40, 142-149. View this article in WRRO
- Rate and timing of cortical responses driven by separate sensory channels. eLife, 4. View this article in WRRO
- Biomimetic approaches to bionic touch through a peripheral nerve interface. Neuropsychologia, 79, 344-353.
- Touch is a team effort: interplay of submodalities in cutaneous sensibility. Trends in Neurosciences, 37(12), 689-697.
- Spatial and temporal codes mediate the tactile perception of natural textures. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(42), 17107-17112.
- Multiplexing Stimulus Information through Rate and Temporal Codes in Primate Somatosensory Cortex. PLoS Biology, 11(5), e1001558-e1001558.
Conference proceedings papers
- Nonlinear scaling of resource allocation in sensory bottlenecks. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 19) (pp 7543-7552). Vancouver, Canada, 8 December 2019 - 14 December 2019. View this article in WRRO
All publications
Journal articles
- Modelling foot sole cutaneous afferents: FootSim. iScience.
- Population coding strategies in human tactile afferents. PLoS Computational Biology, 18(12).
- Expansion and contraction of resource allocation in sensory bottlenecks. eLife, 11. View this article in WRRO
- Getting a grasp on BMIs: Decoding prehension and speech signals. Neuron, 110(11), 1743-1745.
- Malleability of the cortical hand map following a finger nerve block. Science Advances, 8(16).
- Tactile innervation densities across the whole body. Journal of Neurophysiology.
- The effect of contact force on the responses of tactile nerve fibers to scanned textures. Neuroscience. View this article in WRRO
- Speed invariance of tactile texture perception. Journal of Neurophysiology, jn.00161.2017-jn.00161.2017. View this article in WRRO
- Simulating tactile signals from the whole hand with millisecond precision. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA, 114(28), E5693-E5702. View this article in WRRO
- Key considerations in designing a somatosensory neuroprosthesis. Journal of Physiology-Paris. View this article in WRRO
- The neural basis of perceived intensity in natural and artificial touch. Science Translational Medicine, 8(362). View this article in WRRO
- Edge orientation signals in tactile afferents of macaques.. J Neurophysiol, 116(6), 2647-2655. View this article in WRRO
- Importance of spike timing in touch: an analogy with hearing?. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 40, 142-149. View this article in WRRO
- Rate and timing of cortical responses driven by separate sensory channels. eLife, 4. View this article in WRRO
- Biomimetic approaches to bionic touch through a peripheral nerve interface. Neuropsychologia, 79, 344-353.
- Kinematics of unconstrained tactile texture exploration. Journal of Neurophysiology, 113(7), 3013-3020.
- Touch is a team effort: interplay of submodalities in cutaneous sensibility. Trends in Neurosciences, 37(12), 689-697.
- Natural scenes in tactile texture. Journal of Neurophysiology, 111(9), 1792-1802.
- Spatial and temporal codes mediate the tactile perception of natural textures. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(42), 17107-17112.
- Millisecond Precision Spike Timing Shapes Tactile Perception. Journal of Neuroscience, 32(44), 15309-15317.
- Information about Complex Fingertip Parameters in Individual Human Tactile Afferent Neurons. Journal of Neuroscience, 29(25), 8022-8031.
- Multiplexing Stimulus Information through Rate and Temporal Codes in Primate Somatosensory Cortex. PLoS Biology, 11(5), e1001558-e1001558.
Chapters
- Somatosensory Neurons: Spike-Timing, Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience (pp. 3182-3185).
- Somatosensory Neurons: Spike-Timing, Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience (pp. 2756-2759). Springer New York
- Somatosensory Neurons: Spike Timing, Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience (pp. 1-4).
Conference proceedings papers
- Imaging Sub-surface Skin Strain Patterns During Fingertip Sliding. HAPTICS: SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, APPLICATIONS, EUROHAPTICS 2022, Vol. 13235 (pp 358-361)
- Nonlinear scaling of resource allocation in sensory bottlenecks. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 19) (pp 7543-7552). Vancouver, Canada, 8 December 2019 - 14 December 2019. View this article in WRRO
- Dynamic adaptation of exploratory movements for texture perception. INTEGRATIVE AND COMPARATIVE BIOLOGY, Vol. 54 (pp E49-E49)
- Multimodal Nonlinear Filtering Using Gauss-Hermite Quadrature (pp 81-96)
- Active estimation of object dynamics parameters with tactile sensors. 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 18 October 2010 - 22 October 2010.
- Active sequential learning with tactile feedback. Journal of Machine Learning Research, Vol. 9 (pp 677-684)
- The DLR touch sensor I: A flexible tactile sensor for robotic hands based on a crossed-wire approach. 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 18 October 2010 - 22 October 2010.
Posters
- NeurIPS 2019 poster: Nonlinear scaling of resource allocation in sensory bottlenecks.
Datasets
Preprints
- Complexity of spatiotemporal plantar pressure patterns during everyday behaviours, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
- Modelling novelty detection in the thalamocortical loop.
- Expansion and contraction of resource allocation in sensory bottlenecks.
- Malleability of the cortical hand map following a finger nerve block.
- Tactile innervation densities across the whole body.
- Population coding strategies in human tactile afferents, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
- Modelling foot sole cutaneous afferents: FootSim. iScience.
- Research group
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Lab members
- Rodrigo Siqueira De Souza (Research Associate)
- Laura Edmondson (PhD student)
- Giulia Corniani (PhD student)
- Luke Cleland (CCN MSc student)
- Nicholas Garside (CCN MSc student)
- Jonathan Jones (CCN MSc student)
- Zimeng Wan (CCN MSc student)
- Teaching activities
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I am the course director for the MSc Cognitive Neuroscience and Human Neuroimaging program.
I also teach on the following modules:
- PSY6309: Mathematical Modelling and Research skills (module organizer)
- PSY6308: Computational Neuroscience 2 - Theoretical Models
- PSY1002: Cognitive Psychology I
- PSY2002: Cognitive Psychology II