Crossmodal integration and interactions between touch and vision

Colon, Elisabeth [UCL] Mouraux, André [UCL]

In everyday life, while we are sometimes exposed to external stimuli activating a single sensory modality, most ecological stimuli are multimodal. In particular, to efficiently interact with the external world, the integration of sensory inputs conveyed by somatosensory, proprioceptive and visual modalities is crucial. Indeed, somatosensation is critical to monitor the physical contact between our body and external objects, whereas proprioception and vision are critical to monitor the position and movement of our limbs, and vision provides critical information about he external space prior to any contact with the body. Non-invasive EEG techniques are of particular interest to investigate how neural activities belonging to distinct sensory modalities can interact or be integrated at cortical level and in particular how attentional processes are involved in these interactions. The interaction and integration between senses have been studied with ERPs. SS-EPs can be also used to characterize interaction and integration between nociceptive and non-nociceptive somatosensory inputs, or between other senses.