In this study, we describe a new form of synaesthesia in which visual perception of touch elicits conscious tactile experiences in the perceiver. We describe a female subject (C) for whom the observation of another person being touched is experienced as tactile stimulation on the equivalent part of C's own body. Apart from this clearly abnormal synesthetic experience, C is healthy and normal in...

We describe the Responsive User Body Suit (RUBS), a tactile instrument worn by performers that allows the generation and manipulation of audio output using touch triggers. The RUBS system is a responsive interface between organic touch and electronic audio, intimately located on the performer’s body. This system offers an entry point into a more intuitive method of music performance. A short ov...

Touch gestures are today’s main input method for the interaction with smart phones. In particular, unistroke gestures, which are gestures consisting of one articulated line, are commonly used for text input (touch keyboards) and short cuts referring to functions on mobile devices. This work investigates the user’s accuracy of articulating unistroke touch gestures on mobile devices. Therefore, t...

The roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans is an important model system for understanding the genetics and physiology of touch. Classical assays for C. elegans touch, which involve manually touching the animal with a probe and observing its response, are limited by their low throughput and qualitative nature. We developed a microfluidic device in which several dozen animals are subject to spatially l...

Caenorhabditis elegans senses gentle touch along the body via six touch receptor neurons. Although genetic screens and microarray analyses have identified several genes needed for touch sensitivity, these methods miss pleiotropic genes that are essential for the viability, movement, or fertility of the animals. We used neuronally enhanced feeding RNA interference to screen genes that cause leth...

Combining mediated social touch (interpersonal touch over a distance) with visual feedback allows people to both see and feel their interaction partner’s touches. Combining touch with vision is expected to increase the transparency of the interface, as well as the user’s sense of telepresence. We anticipated these positive effects of visual feedback to depend on the morphological congruence of ...