Vision and touch share a number of information-processing goals, including extraction of information about the shapes and locations of objects. This symposium brings together a range of methodological approaches that have been applied to the study of visuo-tactile integration, focusing on recent findings. Alberto Gallace will discuss behavioral work showing that crossmodal perception of changes in stimulus location can be disrupted by inserting a visual or tactile mask between stimulus displays (crossmodal change blindness). Marc Ernst will assess the extent to which behavioral integration of visual and haptic information about shape is statistically optimal, and the conditions under which integration starts to fail. Joshua Lucan will present ERP data on the spatio-temporal brain dynamics of somatosensory shape discrimination that suggest activity in the lateral occipital cortex beginning within the first 500ms of information processing. Krish Sathian will outline functional MRI studies showing common visuo-haptic processing of both object shape and object location, and explore the role of visual imagery in the crossmodal recruitment of visual cortex.

Speakers:
Krish Sathian (Emory University, Atlanta, U.S.)
Joshua Lucan (City College of the City University of New York, U.S.)
Alberto Gallace (Universitá degli Studi di Milano–Bicocca, Milano, Italy)
Marc Ernst (Max Planck Institut für biologische Kybernetik, Tübingen, Germany)