Abstract
Previous research on early deafness has primarily focused on the behavioral and neural changes in the intact visual and tactile modalities. However, how early deafness changes the interplay of these two modalities is not well understood. In the current study, we investigated the effect of auditory deprivation on visuo-tactile interaction by measuring the cross-modal motion aftereffect. Consistent with previous findings, motion aftereffect transferred between vision and touch in a bidirectional manner in hearing participants. However, for deaf participants, the cross-modal transfer occurred only in the tactile-to-visual direction but not in the visual-to-tactile direction. This unidirectional cross-modal motion aftereffect found in the deaf participants could not be explained by unisensory motion aftereffect or discrimination threshold. The results suggest a reduced visual influence on tactile motion perception in early deaf individuals.
Highlights
Previous research on early deafness has primarily focused on the behavioral and neural changes in the intact visual and tactile modalities
We examined the effects of early auditory deprivation on the visuo-tactile interaction by comparing visuo-tactile cross-modal aftereffects between deaf and hearing participants
Consistent with the previous study by Konkle et al.31, we found bidirectional cross-modal motion aftereffects in the hearing group: aftereffects transferred from vision to touch and from touch to vision
Summary
Previous research on early deafness has primarily focused on the behavioral and neural changes in the intact visual and tactile modalities. Research on early deafness has primarily focused on the behavioral and neural changes in the intact visual and tactile modalities. Increased neural responses to visual motion in the deaf have been reported in multisensory areas, such as the superior temporal sulcus (STS) and superior temporal gyrus (STG), in line with animal research showing increased neurons in multimodal regions responsive to the intact modality after hearing loss. Deaf individuals were more susceptible to a doubleflash visual illusion induced by two touches to the face presented in a narrow temporal window, suggesting a dominance of touch over vision when the task is reliant on temporal processing. Vision may dominate spatial tasks over touch and hearing, since vision
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
