The recalibration of tactile perception during tool use is body-part specific

Visual illusion of tool use recalibrates tactile perception.

Brief use of a tool recalibrates multisensory representations of the user's body, a phenomenon called tool embodiment. Despite two decades of research, little is known about its boundary conditions. It has been widely argued that embodiment requires active tool use, suggesting a critical role for somatosensory and motor feedback. The present study used a visual illusion to cast doubt on this vi...

Seeing the Body Distorts Tactile Size Perception 1 RUNNING HEAD: Seeing the Body Distorts Tactile Size Perception Seeing the Body Distorts Tactile Size Perception

Seeing the body distorts tactile size perception.

Vision of the body modulates somatosensation, even when entirely non-informative about stimulation. For example, seeing the body increases tactile spatial acuity, but reduces acute pain. While previous results demonstrate that vision of the body modulates somatosensory sensitivity, it is unknown whether vision also affects metric properties of touch, and if so how. This study investigated how n...

When action is not enough: tool-use reveals tactile-dependent access to Body Schema.

Proper motor control of our own body implies a reliable representation of body parts. This information is supposed to be stored in the Body Schema (BS), a body representation that appears separate from a more perceptual body representation, the Body Image (BI). The dissociation between BS for action and BI for perception, originally based on neuropsychological evidence, has recently become the ...

The Application of Tactile Experience in Urban Perception

Urban perception is the result of mutual transaction between human and environment and the process of perception is developed through the three continuous steps of “sensation”, “perception” and “cognition”. In the first step (sensorial perception), the environmental signals are received via sensorial sensors and each different sense based on its own essence, performance and ability has its own ...