Holle, Henning; Banissy, Michael J.; Wright, Thomas; Bowling, Natalie and Ward, Jamie. 2011. "That's not a real body": identifying stimulus qualities that modulate synaesthetic experiences of touch. Consciousness and cognition, 20(3), pp. 720-6. ISSN 1090-2376 [Article]

No full text available

Abstract or Description

Mirror-touch synaesthesia is a condition where observing touch to another's body induces a subjective tactile sensation on the synaesthetes body. The present study explores which characteristics of the inducing stimulus modulate the synaesthetic touch experience. Fourteen mirror-touch synaesthetes watched videos depicting a touch event while indicating (i) whether the video induced a tactile sensation, (ii) on which side of their body they felt this sensation and (iii) the intensity of the experienced sensation. Results indicate that the synaesthetes experience stronger tactile sensations when observing touch to real bodies, whereas observing touch to dummy bodies, pictures of bodies and disconnected dummy body parts elicited weaker sensations. These results suggest that mirror-touch synaesthesia is not entirely bottom-up driven, but top-down information, such as knowledge about real and dummy body parts, also modulate the intensity of the experience.

Item Type:	Article
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2010.12.002
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Psychology
Dates:	Date Event 2011 Published
Item ID:	5995
Date Deposited:	24 Oct 2011 14:43
Last Modified:	30 Jun 2017 13:03
Peer Reviewed:	Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/5995

Edit Record (login required)