| Recent research has shown that vision can enhance tactile perception in studies with monkeys, patients, and normal participants. However, relatively few studies have investigated if visual information can systematically increase tactile perception. This study used exposure to a visual-tactile conflict to improve tactile processing in order to determine what experimental manipulations of vision and touch induced sustained visual enhancement of tactile perception across extended time periods. A number of different tactile stimulation paradigms were used in order to determine which method would give the most robust and stable improvement in touch perception. While tactile perception was enhanced after conflict exposure in almost all the tactile tasks, the visual enhancement of touch could not be demonstrated repeatedly on successive blocks for an extended period of time. Therefore, subjects likely adapted to the visual-tactile conflict so that repeated administrations of the conflict did not influence their tactile processing. |
