Thinking about touch facilitates tactile but not auditory processing

Helen A Anema,H Chris Dijkerman,Titia Gebuis,Alyanne M De Haan

doi:10.1007/s00221-012-3020-0

Helen A Anema, H Chris Dijkerman + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-012-3020-0

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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.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00221-012-3020-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Highlights

To many of us, it is easy to imagine how a creepy spider crawls down our back or how it feels like when grasping a handful of rice
The current study investigated the effect of tactile and auditory imagery on the left/right discriminations of tactile and auditory stimuli
Dijkerman Department of Neurology, University Medical Centre Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands the thumbs performing the response, the latter to a dual task cost. These results provide the first evidence of a behavioural effect of a tactile imagery assignment on the perception of real tactile stimuli

Summary

Introduction

It is easy to imagine how a creepy spider crawls down our back or how it feels like when grasping a handful of rice. It is currently widely accepted that mental imagery and real perceptual processes overlap substantially. Studies that do investigate tactile imagery, focus on the similarity between neural mechanisms underlying tactile imagery and real touch (Davidson and Schwartz 1977; Uhl et al 1994; Fallgatter et al 1997; Yoo et al 2003; Olivetti Belardinelli et al 2009). Within the field of visual and auditory imagery research, both the underlying neural networks (see for overview Kosslyn et al 2001 and Pylyshin 2002) as well as imagery effects on behaviour have been investigated frequently Behavioural effects of tactile imagery on the processing of ‘real’ tactile stimuli have not yet been investigated

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