Touch to See: Neuropsychological Evidence of a Sensory Mirror System for Touch
Touch to See: Neuropsychological Evidence of a Sensory Mirror System for Touch
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DOI：
10.1093/cercor/bhr283
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发表时间：
2012-09-01
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Maravita, Angelo
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Bolognini, Nadia;Olgiati, Elena;Maravita, Angelo
对触觉的观察可以基于支持直接触觉体验的大脑区域的激活，即躯体感觉皮层。这种镜像感觉活动对视觉感知的行为影响是什么？为了解决这个问题，我们调查了观察到的和感觉到的触摸在右脑损伤的患者之间的因果关系的相互作用，作为其潜在的受损的视觉和/或触觉方式的功能。患者和健康对照进行了检测任务，包括视觉刺激描绘触摸或没有触觉组件。触摸和无触摸刺激呈现在自我中心或allocentric的观点。无论观察角度如何，看到触摸都会不同程度地影响视知觉，这取决于哪种感觉模态受损：在选择性视觉缺陷但没有任何触觉缺陷的患者中，触摸的视觉改善了视觉障碍;这种效果与边缘上回的病变有关。在触觉缺陷但视觉完整的患者中，触摸的视觉干扰视觉处理，诱导视觉障碍样现象。这种破坏性作用与中央后回的损伤有关。因此，躯体感觉系统的损伤可导致视觉处理功能障碍，而完整的躯体感觉处理可有助于视觉感知。
The observation of touch can be grounded in the activation of brain areas underpinning direct tactile experience, namely the somatosensory cortices. What is the behavioral impact of such a mirror sensory activity on visual perception? To address this issue, we investigated the causal interplay between observed and felt touch in right brain-damaged patients, as a function of their underlying damaged visual and/or tactile modalities. Patients and healthy controls underwent a detection task, comprising visual stimuli depicting touches or without a tactile component. Touch and No-touch stimuli were presented in egocentric or allocentric perspectives. Seeing touches, regardless of the viewing perspective, differently affects visual perception depending on which sensory modality is damaged: In patients with a selective visual deficit, but without any tactile defect, the sight of touch improves the visual impairment; this effect is associated with a lesion to the supramarginal gyrus. In patients with a tactile deficit, but intact visual perception, the sight of touch disrupts visual processing, inducing a visual extinction-like phenomenon. This disruptive effect is associated with the damage of the postcentral gyrus. Hence, a damage to the somatosensory system can lead to a dysfunctional visual processing, and an intact somatosensory processing can aid visual perception.