Tactile acuity in the blind: A closer look reveals superiority over the sighted in some but not all cutaneous tasks

Alary, Flamine; Duquette, Marco; Goldstein, Rachel; Chapman, C. Elaine; Voss, Patrice; Buissonnière-Ariza, Valérie La; Leporé, Franco

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.03.014

Cited by 108 publications

(85 citation statements)

References 44 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…3). These results are in agreement with previous studies comparing blind and sighted participants on the fingers (Stevens et al, 1996;Van Boven et al, 2000;Kanics, 2003, 2006; but see Grant et al, 2000;Alary et al, 2009) and lips (Stevens et al, 1996).…”

Section: Evidence That Tactile Experience Drives Acuity Enhancementsupporting

confidence: 93%

Tactile Spatial Acuity Enhancement in Blindness: Evidence for Experience-Dependent Mechanisms

Wong¹,

Gnanakumaran²,

Goldreich³

2011

J. Neurosci.

151

115

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Tactile spatial acuity is enhanced in blindness, according to several studies, but the cause of this enhancement has been controversial. Two competing hypotheses are the tactile experience hypothesis (reliance on the sense of touch drives tactile-acuity enhancement) and the visual deprivation hypothesis (the absence of vision itself drives tactile-acuity enhancement). Here, we performed experiments to distinguish between these two hypotheses. We used force-controlled grating orientation tasks to compare the passive (finger stationary) tactile spatial acuity of 28 profoundly blind and 55 normally sighted humans on the index, middle, and ring fingers of each hand, and on the lips. The tactile experience hypothesis predicted that blind participants would outperform the sighted on the fingers, and that Braille reading would correlate with tactile acuity. The visual deprivation hypothesis predicted that blind participants would outperform the sighted on fingers and lips. Consistent with the tactile experience hypothesis, the blind significantly outperformed the sighted on all fingers, but not on the lips. Additionally, among blind participants, proficient Braille readers on their preferred reading index finger outperformed nonreaders. Finally, proficient Braille readers performed better with their preferred reading index finger than with the opposite index finger, and their acuity on the preferred reading finger correlated with their weekly reading time. These results clearly implicate reliance on the sense of touch as the trigger for tactile spatial acuity enhancement in the blind, and suggest the action of underlying experience-dependent neural mechanisms such as somatosensory and/or cross-modal cortical plasticity.

show abstract

Section: Evidence That Tactile Experience Drives Acuity Enhancementsupporting

confidence: 93%

Tactile Spatial Acuity Enhancement in Blindness: Evidence for Experience-Dependent Mechanisms

Wong¹,

Gnanakumaran²,

Goldreich³

2011

J. Neurosci.

151

115

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…4). Our finding of superior tactile acuity in the blind, while similar to the findings of Goldreich and Kanics and Van Boven et al, differs from the results of Grant et al (2000) and Alary et al (2009). This difference in outcome is perhaps surprising, because all five of these studies evaluated tactile acuity using a grating orientation discrimination task.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

“…When tactile acuity has been measured using grating orientation discrimination, once again the findings have been contradictory: Some studies have found superior discrimination performance for the blind (e.g., Goldreich & Kanics, 2003;Van Boven et al, 2000), while others (e.g., Alary et al, 2009;Grant et al, 2000) have found no difference in performance between their sighted and blind participants. At the moment, it is unclear whether blind adults truly possess enhanced tactile acuity relative to otherwise similar sighted adults.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Blindness enhances tactile acuity and haptic 3-D shape discrimination

Norman

Bartholomew

2011

Atten Percept Psychophys

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study compared the sensory and perceptual abilities of the blind and sighted. The 32 participants were required to perform two tasks: tactile grating orientation discrimination (to determine tactile acuity) and haptic threedimensional (3-D) shape discrimination. The results indicated that the blind outperformed their sighted counterparts (individually matched for both age and sex) on both tactile tasks. The improvements in tactile acuity that accompanied blindness occurred for all blind groups (congenital, early, and late). However, the improvements in haptic 3-D shape discrimination only occurred for the early-onset and lateonset blindness groups; the performance of the congenitally blind was no better than that of the sighted controls. The results of the present study demonstrate that blindness does lead to an enhancement of tactile abilities, but they also suggest that early visual experience may play a role in facilitating haptic 3-D shape discrimination.

show abstract

“…Beyond Braille reading and Braille related tactile stimuli, a number of studies have also provided evidence of superior behavioral performance in the blind compared to sighted peers. This includes 3D shape discrimination (Norman and Bartholomew 2011), tactile acuity assessed by grating orientation discrimination (Norman and Bartholomew 2011), as well as using a 2D angle discrimination task (Alary, Duquette et al 2009) and virbrotactile perception (Wan, Wood et al 2010). Furthermore, it has been found that unlike their sighted counterparts, blind Braille readers retain high tactile acuity (measured with specially designed tactile acuity charts requiring active tactile exploration) without an age-related decline (Legge, Madison et al 2008).…”

Section: 0 Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural correlates associated with superior tactile symmetry perception in the early blind

Bauer

Yazzolino

Hirsch

et al. 2015

Cortex

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Symmetry is an organizational principle that is ubiquitous throughout the visual world. However, this property can also be detected through non-visual modalities such as touch. The role of prior visual experience on detecting tactile patterns containing symmetry remains unclear. We compared the behavioral performance of early blind and sighted (blindfolded) controls on a tactile symmetry detection task. The tactile patterns used were similar in design and complexity as in previous visual perceptual studies. The neural correlates associated with this behavioral task were identified with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In line with growing evidence demonstrating enhanced tactile processing abilities in the blind, we found that early blind individuals showed significantly superior performance in detecting tactile symmetric patterns compared to sighted controls. Furthermore, comparing patterns of activation between these two groups identified common areas of activation (e.g. superior parietal cortex) but key differences also emerged. In particular, tactile symmetry detection in the early blind was also associated with activation that included peri-calcarine cortex, lateral occipital (LO), and middle temporal cortex, as well as inferior temporal and fusiform cortex. These results contribute to the growing evidence supporting superior behavioral abilities in the blind, and the neural correlates associated with crossmodal neuroplasticity following visual deprivation.

show abstract

Tactile acuity in the blind: A closer look reveals superiority over the sighted in some but not all cutaneous tasks

Cited by 108 publications

References 44 publications

Tactile Spatial Acuity Enhancement in Blindness: Evidence for Experience-Dependent Mechanisms

Tactile Spatial Acuity Enhancement in Blindness: Evidence for Experience-Dependent Mechanisms

Blindness enhances tactile acuity and haptic 3-D shape discrimination

Neural correlates associated with superior tactile symmetry perception in the early blind

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About