Human Brain Representations of Haptic and Visual Textures

Abstract

We present a literature review of functional brain imaging studies of haptic and visual texture perception, and highlight our ongoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment of the crossmodal links between vision and touch. In the fMRI experiment, the subjects viewed or touched a piece of wool or denim cloth. A multivoxel pattern analysis of whole-brain fMRI activity revealed the crossmodal nature of natural texture perception. Visual texture representations were found in the somatosensory and association cortices as well as the visual cortex, while haptic texture representations were found in the visual cortex and association cortices as well as the somatosensory cortex. Furthermore, shared visuo-haptic representations were found in the parietal association, somatosensory, and visual cortices. These results that suggested the crossmodal transfer of texture information across functionally segregated sensory and associative brain regions are discussed in relation to previous findings on texture perception and aesthetic texture or shitsukan.