Brain Advance Access published online on April 7, 2005
Brain, doi:10.1093/brain/awh500
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1 Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. In this study, we describe a new form of synaesthesia in which visual perception of touch elicits conscious tactile experiences in the perceiver. We describe a female subject (C) for whom the observation of another person being touched is experienced as tactile stimulation on the equivalent part of C's own body. Apart from this clearly abnormal synesthetic experience, C is healthy and normal in every other way. In this study, we investigate whether C's ‘mirrored touch’ synesthetic experience is caused by overactivity in the neural system that responds to the observation of touch. A functional MRI experiment was designed to investigate the neural system involved in the perception of touch in a group of 12 non-synesthetic control subjects and in C. We investigated neural activity to the observation of touch to a human face or neck compared with the observation of touch to equivalent regions on an object. Furthermore, to investigate the somatosensory topography of the activations during observation of touch, we compared activations when observing a human face or neck being touched with activations when the subjects themselves were touched on their own face or neck. The results demonstrated that the somatosensory cortex was activated in the non-synesthetic subjects by the mere observation of touch and that this activation was somatotopically organized such that observation of touch to the face activated the head area of primary somatosensory cortex, whereas observation of touch to the neck did not. Moreover, in non-synesthetic subjects, the brain's mirror system--comprising premotor cortex, superior temporal sulcus and parietal cortex--was activated by the observation of touch to another human more than to an object. C's activation patterns differed in three ways from those of the non-synesthetic controls. First, activations in the somatosensory cortex were significantly higher in C when she observed touch. Secondly, an area in left premotor cortex was activated in C to a greater extent than in the non-synesthetic group. Thirdly, the anterior insula cortex bilaterally was activated in C, but there was no evidence of such activation in the non-synesthetic group. The results suggest that, in C, the mirror system for touch is overactive, above the threshold for conscious tactile perception.
Received July 28, 2004
Revised January 11, 2005
Accepted March 9, 2005
Article
Somatosensory activations during the observation of touch and a case of vision-touch synaesthesia
2 Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK
3 Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK; Department of Psychology, University College London, London, UK
4 Department of Psychology, University College London, London, UK
S.-J. Blakemore, E-mail: s.blakemore{at}ucl.ac.uk
Abstract 
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  V. S. Ramachandran and D. Brang Sensations Evoked in Patients With Amputation From Watching an Individual Whose Corresponding Intact Limb Is Being Touched Arch Neurol, October 1, 2009; 66(10): 1281 - 1284. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 M.-C. Albanese, E. G. Duerden, V. Bohotin, P. Rainville, and G. H. Duncan Differential Effects of Cognitive Demand on Human Cortical Activation Associated With Vibrotactile Stimulation J Neurophysiol, September 1, 2009; 102(3): 1623 - 1631. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 J. A. C. J. Bastiaansen, M. Thioux, and C. Keysers Evidence for mirror systems in emotions Phil Trans R Soc B, August 27, 2009; 364(1528): 2391 - 2404. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 J. Zaki, J. Weber, N. Bolger, and K. Ochsner The neural bases of empathic accuracy PNAS, July 7, 2009; 106(27): 11382 - 11387. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 V. Gazzola and C. Keysers The Observation and Execution of Actions Share Motor and Somatosensory Voxels in all Tested Subjects: Single-Subject Analyses of Unsmoothed fMRI Data Cereb Cortex, June 1, 2009; 19(6): 1239 - 1255. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 R. Hari and M. V. Kujala Brain Basis of Human Social Interaction: From Concepts to Brain Imaging Physiol Rev, April 1, 2009; 89(2): 453 - 479. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
C. D Frith and T. Singer The role of social cognition in decision making Phil Trans R Soc B, December 12, 2008; 363(1511): 3875 - 3886. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 V. Gallese Empathy, Embodied Simulation, and the Brain: Commentary on Aragno and Zepf/Hartmann J Am Psychoanal Assoc, September 1, 2008; 56(3): 769 - 781. [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
C. D Frith Social cognition Phil Trans R Soc B, June 12, 2008; 363(1499): 2033 - 2039. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 C. McCabe, E. T. Rolls, A. Bilderbeck, and F. McGlone Cognitive influences on the affective representation of touch and the sight of touch in the human brain Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci, June 1, 2008; 3(2): 97 - 108. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 F. Benuzzi, F. Lui, D. Duzzi, P. F. Nichelli, and C. A. Porro Does It Look Painful or Disgusting? Ask Your Parietal and Cingulate Cortex J. Neurosci., January 23, 2008; 28(4): 923 - 931. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
I. Bufalari, T. Aprile, A. Avenanti, F. Di Russo, and S. M. Aglioti Empathy for Pain and Touch in the Human Somatosensory Cortex Cereb Cortex, November 1, 2007; 17(11): 2553 - 2561. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
M. Tsakiris, M. D. Hesse, C. Boy, P. Haggard, and G. R. Fink Neural Signatures of Body Ownership: A Sensory Network for Bodily Self-Consciousness Cereb Cortex, October 1, 2007; 17(10): 2235 - 2244. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
I. Dinstein, U. Hasson, N. Rubin, and D. J. Heeger Brain Areas Selective for Both Observed and Executed Movements J Neurophysiol, September 1, 2007; 98(3): 1415 - 1427. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
E. Tognoli, J. Lagarde, G. C. DeGuzman, and J. A. S. Kelso From the Cover: The phi complex as a neuromarker of human social coordination PNAS, May 8, 2007; 104(19): 8190 - 8195. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
C. D Frith The social brain? Phil Trans R Soc B, April 29, 2007; 362(1480): 671 - 678. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
V. Gallese, M. N. Eagle, and P. Migone Intentional Attunement: Mirror Neurons and the Neural Underpinnings of Interpersonal Relations J Am Psychoanal Assoc, March 1, 2007; 55(1): 131 - 175. [Abstract] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
N. A. Harrison, T. Singer, P. Rotshtein, R. J. Dolan, and H. D. Critchley Pupillary contagion: central mechanisms engaged in sadness processing Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci, June 1, 2006; 1(1): 5 - 17. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|