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Related Concept Videos

Tactile and Chemical Senses01:27

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Tactile senses encompass touch, temperature, and pain, each mediated by specific receptors. Touch receptors detect mechanical energy or pressure against the skin. Sensory fibers from these receptors enter the spinal cord and relay information to the brain stem. Here, most fibers cross over to the opposite side of the brain. The touch information then moves to the thalamus, which projects a map of the body's surface onto the somatosensory areas of the parietal lobes in the cerebral cortex.
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The somatosensory system relays sensory information from the skin, mucous membranes, limbs, and joints. Somatosensation is more familiarly known as the sense of touch. A typical somatosensory pathway includes three types of long neurons: primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary neurons have cell bodies located near the spinal cord in groups of neurons called dorsal root ganglia. The sensory neurons of ganglia innervate designated areas of skin called dermatomes.
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The auditory system is essential for sound perception, utilizing various critical structures. When sound waves enter the outer ear, they travel through the ear canal and cause the eardrum to vibrate. These vibrations are then transmitted to the middle ear, where three tiny bones – the malleus, incus, and stapes – amplify the sound. This amplification is crucial, as it ensures that the sound vibrations are strong enough to be conveyed to the inner ear. These vibrations then reach the...
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Feb 23, 2026

Quantitative Assessment of Cortical Auditory-tactile Processing in Children with Disabilities
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Sensitivity to auditory-tactile colocation in early infancy.

Rhiannon L Thomas1, Reeva Misra2, Emine Akkunt1

  • 1Sensorimotor Development Research Unit, Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.

Developmental Science
|September 8, 2017
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Infants as young as 4 months can detect when sounds and touches occur at the same location. By 6 months, infants show a preference for novel crossmodal spatial relations, indicating developing sensory integration.

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Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Sensory Perception

Background:

  • Perceiving a coherent environment requires integrating multisensory information.
  • Representing tactile stimuli in the same spatial frame as visual and auditory stimuli is crucial for action and environmental awareness.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether 4- and 6-month-old infants can detect the colocation of tactile and auditory stimuli delivered to the hands.
  • To explore the developmental trajectory of auditory-tactile spatial integration in early infancy.

Main Methods:

  • Infants' visual preferences for spatially congruent and incongruent auditory-tactile events were recorded.
  • Two experiments were conducted with 6-month-old infants (n=14) and 4-month-old infants (n=14).
  • A unisensory control condition was used to compare crossmodal and supramodal spatial coding.

Main Results:

  • Six-month-old infants looked longer at incongruent stimuli, while 4-month-old infants preferred congruent stimuli.
  • Infants at both ages demonstrated sensitivity to the colocation of auditory and tactile signals.
  • An age-wise shift in preference from congruent to incongruent stimuli was observed, suggesting increasing preference for novel crossmodal spatial relations.

Conclusions:

  • Four- and 6-month-old infants can represent auditory and tactile stimuli within a common spatial frame of reference.
  • The observed shift in preference indicates that auditory-tactile colocation perception develops with experience.
  • By 6 months, the ability to perceive auditory-tactile colocation relies on crossmodal rather than supramodal spatial coding.