Non-informative vision causes adaptive changes in tactile sensitivity

Justin Harris, Psychology, University of Sydney

Abstract
The present study focuses on the integration of vision and touch, and in particular how tactile perception is affected by a view of the relevant body part but which contains no information about the tactile stimulus itself. Previous studies have established that this “non-informative vision” improves subsequent tactile sensitivity (Kennett, Taylor-Clarke, & Haggard, 2001, Current Biology 11, 1188–1191), a finding we confirm in the present study. However, we also report here that non-informative vision impairs the detection of tactile stimuli. This effect is shown to resemble, and indeed combine additively with, shifts in discrimination and detection thresholds produced by suprathreshold tactile stimulation. We conclude that non-informative vision of the body does not simply enhance somatosensory processing, but rather it induces adaptive changes in tactile sensitivity via shifts in gain control operating within a bimodal sensory system.

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