Department of Psychology, University of Pavia, Piazza Botta 6, 27100 Pavia, Italy.
Exp Brain Res. 2011 Mar;209(3):365-74. doi: 10.1007/s00221-011-2559-5. Epub 2011 Feb 3.
When we reach out to grasp objects, vision plays a major role in the control of our movements. Nevertheless, other sensory modalities contribute to the fine-tuning of our actions. Even olfaction has been shown to play a role in the scaling of movements directed at objects. Much less is known about how auditory information might be used to program grasping movements. The aim of our study was to investigate how the sound of a target object affects the planning of grasping movements in normal right-handed subjects. We performed an experiment in which auditory information could be used to infer size of targets when the availability of visual information was varied from trial to trial. Classical kinematic parameters (such as grip aperture) were measured to evaluate the influence of auditory information. In addition, an optimal inference modeling was applied to the data. The scaling of grip aperture indicated that the introduction of sound allowed subjects to infer the size of the object when vision was not available. Moreover, auditory information affected grip aperture even when vision was available. Our findings suggest that the differences in the natural impact sounds of objects of different sizes being placed on a surface can be used to plan grasping movements.
当我们伸手去抓物体时，视觉在控制我们的运动中起着主要作用。然而，其他感觉模式也有助于我们的动作微调。甚至嗅觉也被证明在针对物体的运动缩放中发挥作用。关于听觉信息如何用于规划抓握动作，人们知之甚少。我们研究的目的是调查目标物体的声音如何影响正常右利手受试者抓握动作的规划。我们进行了一项实验，在该实验中，当视觉信息的可用性在试验之间变化时，可以使用听觉信息来推断目标的大小。测量了经典运动学参数（例如握持开口），以评估听觉信息的影响。此外，对数据应用了最优推断建模。握持开口的缩放表明，当没有视觉信息时，引入声音可以让受试者推断物体的大小。此外，即使有视觉信息，听觉信息也会影响握持开口。我们的发现表明，不同大小的物体放在表面上时产生的自然撞击声的差异可用于规划抓握动作。
