US EditionBrain's Visual Regions Contain Hidden Touch Maps, Study Finds
Researchers found that watching others in pain activates body-part-specific touch maps in visual brain regions, simulating touch in 174 participants during film viewing.
- Parts of the brain thought to process only vision are also organized according to a 'map' of the body, which allows visual images to trigger touch sensations.
- In dorsal regions, body maps align with visual information, linking foot sensations to lower visuals and face sensations to upper visuals.
- Brain areas previously seen as purely visual demonstrate response patterns based on touch sensations that correlate with the viewer's own body.
- The study suggests that simulating what we observe aids in understanding others' experiences, with differing processes possibly in autistic individuals.
14 Articles
14 Articles
How neuroscientists used Hollywood films to map out the human experience
In collaboration with universities across the world, Nicholas Hedger (University of Reading) and Tomas Knapen (Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience & Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) explored the depths of the human experience. They discovered how the brain translates the visual world around us into touch, thereby creating a physical embodied world for us to experience. “This aspect of human experience is a fantastic area for AI develop…
Why watching someone get hurt on screen makes you wince: How the brain triggers echoes of touch sensation
If watching Robert De Niro ordering hammer-based retribution on a cheat's hand in "Casino" instinctively made you wince, you are not alone. Many people say that seeing bodily injury on film makes them flinch, as if they "feel" it themselves. It is as if the sting leaps straight off the screen and into your skin.
Vicarious body maps bridge vision and touch in the human brain
Our sensory systems work together to generate a cohesive experience of the world around us. Watching others being touched activates brain areas representing our own sense of touch: the visual system recruits touch-related computations to simulate bodily consequences of visual inputs1. One long-standing question is how the brain implements this interface between visual and somatosensory representations2. Here, to address this question, we develop…
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