快猫短视频

FEELING a key in your pocket is almost like seeing it on a table: you can
pick out its shape almost as if you can see it. But how does tactile information
produce a visual mental image? Neuroscientists in Sweden say they may have found
the part of the brain that allows different senses to swap information.

Nouchine Hadjikhani and Per Roland at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm
used positron emission tomography to scan the brains of a group of subjects
while they decided if two similar objects were identical. In two of the tasks,
they made comparisons using a single sense: touching both or seeing both. In the
third task, they were asked to compare an object they touched with an object
they saw.

In the third task alone, a structure in the frontal lobe called the
insula-claustrum became active (The Journal of Neuroscience, vol 18, p
1072). 鈥淭he claustrum has some role in binding these two separate processes
together,鈥� Roland concludes.

鈥淭he findings are very interesting and very reasonable,鈥� says Eraldo Paulesu,
a neuroscientist at the Scientific Institute of San Raffaele in Milan. His
earlier work on synaesthesia鈥攖he mixing of the senses鈥攕upports the
new findings. Synaesthetes, who often perceive sounds as colours, also have
unusual activity in the insula-claustrum area, unlike normal controls.

However, Paulesu cautions that more parts of the brain are probably involved.
鈥淭o circumscribe the multimodal integration to this area alone would be unwise,鈥�
he says.