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Seeing the hand boosts feeling on the cheek.

Andrea Serino1, Sonia Padiglioni, Patrick Haggard

  • 1Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università degli Studi di Bologna, Italy. andrea.serino@unibo.it

Cortex; a Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior
|July 16, 2008
PubMed
Summary

Visual enhancement of touch (VET) improves tactile acuity, especially for body parts represented closely in the somatosensory cortex (SI). This multisensory effect suggests VET may occur within SI and could aid tactile deficit recovery.

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Sensory integration
  • Multisensory processing

Background:

  • Tactile acuity can be enhanced by visual input of the stimulated body part, a phenomenon known as visual enhancement of touch (VET).
  • The primary somatosensory cortex (SI) exhibits somatotopic organization, mapping different body parts in specific, adjacent regions.
  • The neural mechanisms and somatotopic specificity of VET are not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the somatotopic extent of visual enhancement of touch (VET).
  • To determine if VET is limited to the viewed body part or spreads to other body regions.
  • To explore the role of primary somatosensory cortex (SI) organization in VET.

Main Methods:

  • Assessed tactile acuity on the hand, face, and foot in healthy subjects under three visual conditions: viewing the stimulated hand, viewing the foot, and blindfolded.
  • Conducted control experiments to differentiate VET from visuo-spatial attention effects.
  • Analyzed tactile sensitivity changes across body parts based on the viewed body region.

Main Results:

  • Viewing the hand enhanced tactile sensitivity on both the hand and the adjacent face representation in SI, but not the foot.
  • Viewing the foot improved tactile sensitivity only on the foot.
  • Control experiments confirmed the effect was due to visual body perception, not general attention.

Conclusions:

  • Visual enhancement of touch (VET) operates along a somatotopic gradient, consistent with the organization of the primary somatosensory cortex (SI).
  • These findings suggest VET involves processing within SI, integrating visual and tactile information based on body representation.
  • VET's somatotopic nature offers potential applications for rehabilitating tactile deficits in patients with somatosensory cortex lesions.