Thinking about touch facilitates tactile but not auditory processing

H.A. Anema, A.M. de Haan, T. Gebuis, H.C. Dijkerman

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Mental imagery is considered to be important for normal conscious experience. It is most frequently investigated in the visual, auditory and motor domain (imagination of movement), while the studies on tactile imagery (imagination of touch) are scarce. The current study investigated the effect of tactile and auditory imagery on the left/right discriminations of tactile and auditory stimuli. In line with our hypothesis, we observed that after tactile imagery, tactile stimuli were responded to faster as compared to auditory stimuli and vice versa. On average, tactile stimuli were responded to faster as compared to auditory stimuli, and stimuli in the imagery condition were on average responded to slower as compared to baseline performance (left/right discrimination without imagery assignment). The former is probably due to the spatial and somatotopic proximity of the fingers receiving the taps and the thumbs performing the response (button press), the latter to a dual task cost. Together, these results provide the first evidence of a behavioural effect of a tactile imagery assignment on the perception of real tactile stimuli.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)373-380
Number of pages8
JournalExperimental Brain Research
Volume218
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2012

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Thinking about touch facilitates tactile but not auditory processing'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this