Enhancement Of Touch Research Articles

A direct comparison of sound and vibration as sources of stimulation for a sensory substitution glove

Sensory substitution devices (SSDs) facilitate the detection of environmental information through enhancement of touch and/or hearing capabilities. Research has demonstrated that several tasks can be successfully completed using acoustic, vibrotactile, and multimodal devices. The suitability of a substituting modality is also mediated by the type of information required to perform the specific task. The present study tested the adequacy of touch and hearing in a grasping task by utilizing a sensory substitution glove. The substituting modalities inform, through increases in stimulation intensity, about the distance between the fingers and the objects. A psychophysical experiment of magnitude estimation was conducted. Forty blindfolded sighted participants discriminated equivalently the intensity of both vibrotactile and acoustic stimulation, although they experienced some difficulty with the more intense stimuli. Additionally, a grasping task involving cylindrical objects of varying diameters, distances and orientations was performed. Thirty blindfolded sighted participants were divided into vibration, sound, or multimodal groups. High performance was achieved (84% correct grasps) with equivalent success rate between groups. Movement variables showed more precision and confidence in the multimodal condition. Through a questionnaire, the multimodal group indicated their preference for using a multimodal SSD in daily life and identified vibration as their primary source of stimulation. These results demonstrate that there is an improvement in performance with specific-purpose SSDs, when the necessary information for a task is identified and coupled with the delivered stimulation. Furthermore, the results suggest that it is possible to achieve functional equivalence between substituting modalities when these previous steps are met.

Touch (Sk)Interrupted?

This article focuses on Dante or Die Theatre's socially distanced performance installation Skin Hunger (2021), an intimate one-on-one experience which explores the fundamental role that touch plays in our lives. The desire for contact is enduring in the social and sensorial imagination, particularly now during what Richard Kearney has termed the ‘pandemic eclipse of the tactile’. Elsewhere I have asked whether our tactile starvation will manifest in an increase of productions that satiate our need for touch? Or whether our anxieties over contact will predominate and result in an increased ‘sanitization’ of productions, a reduction in (sk)interactivity, and the proliferation of narratives which draw on our phobic responses? With this line of questioning in mind, this article will document my experience of Skin Hunger, as a ‘socially distanced spectator’, within this new framework of the socially distanced performance installation. It will consider the (skin)aesthetics used – the performers, for example, are swathed in plastic – to enable safe, intimate encounters between performers and the audience. It will also focus on the ways in which the absence of touch might increase the power of ‘the promise of touch [as] an explicit dramaturgical tool’ (Shearing 2015: 72). With reference to the health and safety documentation prepared by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, in consultation with representatives of the performing arts sector, this article will ultimately suggest how 'statecraft,' or the visible COVID safety measures in place, might become a form of 'stagecraft' in relation to the development of new (skin)aesthetics and, more broadly, the enhancement of touch – or, rather, the absence and anticipation of touch – as a dramaturgical tool.

Seeing and feeling for self and other: Proprioceptive spatial location determines multisensory enhancement of touch

In the Visual Enhancement of Touch (VET), simply viewing one’s hand improves tactile spatial perception, even though vision is non-informative. While previous studies had suggested that looking at another person’s hand could also enhance tactile perception, no previous study had systematically investigated the differences between viewing one’s body and someone else’s. The aim of this study was to shed light on the relation between visuo–tactile interactions and the self-other distinction. In Experiment 1 we manipulated the spatial location where a hand was seen. Viewing one’s hand enhanced tactile acuity relative to viewing a neutral object, but only when the image of the hand was spatially aligned with the actual location of the participant’s unseen hand. The VET effect did not occur when one’s hand was viewed at a location other than that experienced proprioceptively. In contrast, viewing another’s hand produced enhanced tactile perception irrespective of spatial location. In Experiment 2, we used a multisensory stimulation technique, known as Visual Remapping of Touch, to reduce perceived spatial misalignment of vision and touch. When participants saw an image of their own hand being touched at the same time as the tactile stimulation, the reduction in perceived misalignment caused VET effect to return, even though the spatial location of the images was not consistent with the actual body posture. Our results suggest that multisensory modulation of touch depends on a representation of one’s body that is fundamentally spatial in nature. In contrast, representation of others is free from this spatial constraint.

Just seeing you makes me feel better: Interpersonal enhancement of touch

The human brain may contain “mirror systems” allowing mental simulation of the sensorimotor states of others. Most research has focused on interpersonal sharing of motor representations, with relatively little focus on sensation. Here we show that viewing the body of another person significantly enhances the spatial resolution of touch on the corresponding body part. Thirty subjects judged the orientation of gratings presented to the index finger tip, either when viewing their own hand, when viewing a neutral object presented in approximately the same location, or when viewing the undisguised hand of a third person standing behind them. Orientation discrimination was significantly more accurate when viewing one's own body compared to when viewing a neutral object. The same enhancement effect was found when viewing another's body. Performance when viewing one's own body did not differ significantly from performance when viewing the body of another person. This result suggests a purely sensory interpersonal sharing of body representations. It also suggests a specifically interpersonal modulation of primary sensory functions within the brain.