Department of Neuropsychology, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, 3801 University, Room 276, Montreal, QC, H3A 2B4, Canada.
Exp Brain Res. 2010 May;202(4):747-54. doi: 10.1007/s00221-010-2178-6. Epub 2010 Feb 18.
Shape is an inherent property of objects existing in both vision and touch but not audition. Can shape then be represented by sound artificially? It has previously been shown that sound can convey visual information by means of image-to-sound coding, but whether sound can code tactile information is not clear. Blindfolded sighted individuals were trained to recognize tactile spatial information using sounds mapped from abstract shapes. After training, subjects were able to match auditory input to tactually discerned shapes and showed generalization to novel auditory-tactile pairings. Furthermore, they showed complete transfer to novel visual shapes, despite the fact that training did not involve any visual exposure. In addition, we found enhanced tactile acuity specific to the training stimuli. The present study demonstrates that as long as tactile space is coded in a systematic way, shape can be conveyed via a medium that is not spatial, suggesting a metamodal representation.
形状是存在于视觉和触觉中的物体的固有属性，但不存在于听觉中。那么，形状可以通过人为的声音来表示吗？先前已经表明，声音可以通过图像到声音的编码来传达视觉信息，但声音是否可以编码触觉信息尚不清楚。蒙住眼睛的视力正常的个体使用从抽象形状映射而来的声音来训练识别触觉空间信息。经过训练，受试者能够将听觉输入与触觉分辨的形状相匹配，并对新的听觉触觉配对表现出概括。此外，尽管训练不涉及任何视觉暴露，但他们完全转移到了新的视觉形状。此外，我们发现特定于训练刺激的触觉锐度增强。本研究表明，只要触觉空间以系统的方式进行编码，形状就可以通过非空间的媒介来传达，这表明了一种跨模态的表示。
