Feeling with the Mind’s Eye: the Role of Visual Imagery in Tactile Perception

Cross-modal interactions are characteristic of normal perception. In this article, we discuss our work on cross-modal interactions between touch and vision in normally sighted humans. A region of extrastriate visual cortex, near the parieto-occipital fissure, is not only active during but also neces...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inOptometry and vision science Vol. 78; no. 5; pp. 276 - 281
Main Authors SATHIAN, K., ZANGALADZE, and ANDRO
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Hagerstown, MD Lippincott Williams & Wilkins 01.05.2001
Subjects
Biological and medical sciences
Humans
Imagination
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Medical sciences
Ophthalmology
Orientation
Tomography, Emission-Computed
Touch - physiology
Vision disorders
Visual Cortex - physiology
Visual Perception - physiology
Human
Tactile sensitivity
Eye disease
Visual imagery
Healthy subject
Vision disorder
Interaction
Tactile reading
Blindness
Experimental study
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Summary:Cross-modal interactions are characteristic of normal perception. In this article, we discuss our work on cross-modal interactions between touch and vision in normally sighted humans. A region of extrastriate visual cortex, near the parieto-occipital fissure, is not only active during but also necessary for tactile discrimination of grating orientation (but not spatial frequency). This is consistent with a role for visual imagery in certain aspects of tactile perception. These findings have implications for the interpretation of visual cortical involvement in Braille reading by the blind.
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ISSN:1040-5488
DOI:10.1097/00006324-200105000-00010