That's not a real body: identifying stimulus qualities that modulate synaesthetic experiences of touch

Holle, Henning.; Banissy, Michael.; Wright, Thomas.; Bowling, Natalie.; Ward, Jamie.

doi:10.1016/j.concog.2010.12.002

Authors

Dr Henning Holle H.Holle@hull.ac.uk
Senior Lecturer in Psychology / Leader of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience group ( www.hull.ac.uk/neuroscience )

Michael Banissy

Thomas Wright

Natalie Bowling

Jamie Ward

Abstract

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.

Journal Article Type	Article
Publication Date	2011-09
Journal	Consciousness and cognition
Print ISSN	1053-8100
Publisher	Elsevier
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	20
Issue	3
Pages	720-726
Institution Citation	Holle, H., Banissy, M., Wright, T., Bowling, N., & Ward, J. (2011). That's not a real body: identifying stimulus qualities that modulate synaesthetic experiences of touch. Consciousness and cognition, 20(3), (720-726). doi:10.1016/j.concog.2010.12.002. ISSN 1053-8100
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2010.12.002
Keywords	Mirror-touch Synaesthesia; Synesthesia; Simulation; Observed touch
Publisher URL	https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810010002618?via%3Dihub
PMID	21237676