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Cortical signatures of vicarious tactile experience in four-month-old infants
The human brain recruits similar brain regions when a state is experienced (e.g., touch, pain, actions) and when that state is passively observed in other individuals. In adults, seeing other people being touched activates similar brain areas as when we experience touch ourselves. Here we show that...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Elsevier
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6968956/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28942240 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2017.09.003 |
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author | Rigato, Silvia Banissy, Michael J. Romanska, Aleksandra Thomas, Rhiannon van Velzen, José Bremner, Andrew J. |
author_facet | Rigato, Silvia Banissy, Michael J. Romanska, Aleksandra Thomas, Rhiannon van Velzen, José Bremner, Andrew J. |
author_sort | Rigato, Silvia |
collection | PubMed |
description | The human brain recruits similar brain regions when a state is experienced (e.g., touch, pain, actions) and when that state is passively observed in other individuals. In adults, seeing other people being touched activates similar brain areas as when we experience touch ourselves. Here we show that already by four months of age, cortical responses to tactile stimulation are modulated by visual information specifying another person being touched. We recorded somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) in 4-month-old infants while they were presented with brief vibrotactile stimuli to the hands. At the same time that the tactile stimuli were presented the infants observed another person’s hand being touched by a soft paintbrush or approached by the paintbrush which then touched the surface next to their hand. A prominent positive peak in SEPs contralateral to the site of tactile stimulation around 130 ms after the tactile stimulus onset was of a significantly larger amplitude for the “Surface” trials than for the “Hand” trials. These findings indicate that, even at four months of age, somatosensory cortex is not only involved in the personal experience of touch but can also be vicariously recruited by seeing other people being touched. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6968956 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | Elsevier |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-69689562020-01-21 Cortical signatures of vicarious tactile experience in four-month-old infants Rigato, Silvia Banissy, Michael J. Romanska, Aleksandra Thomas, Rhiannon van Velzen, José Bremner, Andrew J. Dev Cogn Neurosci Article The human brain recruits similar brain regions when a state is experienced (e.g., touch, pain, actions) and when that state is passively observed in other individuals. In adults, seeing other people being touched activates similar brain areas as when we experience touch ourselves. Here we show that already by four months of age, cortical responses to tactile stimulation are modulated by visual information specifying another person being touched. We recorded somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) in 4-month-old infants while they were presented with brief vibrotactile stimuli to the hands. At the same time that the tactile stimuli were presented the infants observed another person’s hand being touched by a soft paintbrush or approached by the paintbrush which then touched the surface next to their hand. A prominent positive peak in SEPs contralateral to the site of tactile stimulation around 130 ms after the tactile stimulus onset was of a significantly larger amplitude for the “Surface” trials than for the “Hand” trials. These findings indicate that, even at four months of age, somatosensory cortex is not only involved in the personal experience of touch but can also be vicariously recruited by seeing other people being touched. Elsevier 2017-09-14 /pmc/articles/PMC6968956/ /pubmed/28942240 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2017.09.003 Text en © 2017 The Authors http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Rigato, Silvia Banissy, Michael J. Romanska, Aleksandra Thomas, Rhiannon van Velzen, José Bremner, Andrew J. Cortical signatures of vicarious tactile experience in four-month-old infants |
title | Cortical signatures of vicarious tactile experience in four-month-old infants |
title_full | Cortical signatures of vicarious tactile experience in four-month-old infants |
title_fullStr | Cortical signatures of vicarious tactile experience in four-month-old infants |
title_full_unstemmed | Cortical signatures of vicarious tactile experience in four-month-old infants |
title_short | Cortical signatures of vicarious tactile experience in four-month-old infants |
title_sort | cortical signatures of vicarious tactile experience in four-month-old infants |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6968956/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28942240 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2017.09.003 |
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