Abstract
In the context of the Touch-Hapsys project, our group investigated whether the two main components of the cortical visual systems, i.e., the ventral ”what” pathway and the dorsal ”where” pathways, are devoted merely to the processing of visual information or rather they are organized in a supramodal fashion, that is, they are able to process information independently from the sensory modality through which such an information reaches the brain. Sighted and congenitally blind individuals underwent fMRI scan examinations while performing distinct visual and/or tactile experimental tasks involving object recognition, movement detection and spatial localization. These functional studies revealed that both sighted subjects and individuals with no previous visual experience rely on these supramodal brain areas of the ventral and dorsal extrastriate cortex to acquire normal knowledge about objects and interact effectively with the surrounding world.
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Ricciardi, E., Bonino, D., Sani, L., Pietrini, P. (2008). Functional Exploration Studies of Supramodal Organization in the Human Extrastriate Cortex. In: Bicchi, A., Buss, M., Ernst, M.O., Peer, A. (eds) The Sense of Touch and its Rendering. Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol 45. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-79035-8_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-79035-8_2
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