Temporal Frequency Channels Are Linked across Audition and Touch

Abstract

Summary Temporal frequency is a fundamental sensory dimension in audition and touch. In audition, analysis of temporal frequency is necessary for speech and music perception [1]; in touch, the spectral analysis of vibratory signals has been implicated in texture perception [2, 3] and in sensing the environment through tools [4–7]. Environmental oscillations impinging upon the ear are generally thought to be processed independently of oscillations impinging upon the skin. Here, we show that frequency channels are perceptually linked across audition and touch. In a series of psychophysical experiments, we demonstrate that auditory stimuli interfere with tactile frequency perception in a systematic manner. Specifically, performance on a tactile frequency-discrimination task is impaired when an auditory distractor is presented with the tactile stimuli, but only if the frequencies of the auditory and tactile stimuli are similar. The frequency-dependent interference effect is observed whether the distractors are pure tones or band-pass noise, so an auditory percept of pitch is not required for the effect to be produced. Importantly, distractors that strongly impair frequency discrimination do not interfere with judgments of tactile intensity. This surprisingly specific crosstalk between different modalities reflects the importance of supramodal representations of fundamental sensory dimensions.

Speech sounds alter facial skin sensation

“…There have been previous demonstrations of auditory-somatosensory interactions in situations other than speech (Jousmaki and Hari 1998;Ro et al 2009;Yau et al 2009;Zampini and Spence 2004). In particular, there are robust effects of auditory input on tactile frequency discrimination, and the auditory cross-sensory interference is quite specific.…”

“…Interactions between the auditory and somatosensory systems have been documented previously in nonspeech contexts such as the detection of events in different spatial locations (Murray et al 2005;Tajadura-Jiménez et al 2009) and temporal frequency discrimination (Yau et al 2009(Yau et al , 2010. The associated neural mechanisms have been investigated using brain imaging in humans (Beauchamp et al 2008;Foxe et al 2002;Murray et al 2005) and in other primates (Fu et al 2003;Kayser et al 2005;Lakatos et al 2007).…”

Crossmodal correspondences: A tutorial review

“…A. Morgan, Goodson, & Jones, 1975;Simner & Ludwig, 2009;P. Walker, Francis, & Walker, in press), audition and touch (e.g., P. Walker & Smith, 1985;Yau, Olenczak, Dammann, & Bensmaia, 2009;see also von Békésy, 1959), and tastes/flavours and sounds (see Bronner, 2011;Bronner, Bruhn, Hirt, & Piper, 2008;Crisinel & Spence, 2009, 2010a, 2010bHolt-Hansen, 1968, 1976Mesz, Trevisan, & Sigman, 2011;Rudmin & Cappelli, 1983;Simner, Cuskley, & Kirby, 2010). Researchers have also highlighted crossmodal associations between colours and odours (Gilbert et al, 1996;Spence, 2010), tastes (O'Mahony, 1983), and flavours (see , for a review).…”

Crossmodal correspondences between visual, olfactory and auditory information

“…During the past decades the topic of crossmodal correspondences has gained in interest. Crossmodal correspondences have been found between many different sensory modalities, for example: betwee n audition and touch (Yau et al, 2009), olfaction and touch (Demattè et al, 2006a), vision and touch (Martino & Marks, 2000), auditory pitch and smell (Belkin et al, 1997), color and olfaction (Demattè et al, 2006b;Kemp & Gilbert, 1996), shapes and olfaction (Seo et al, 2010), color and taste , nonsense-words/shapes and taste (Spence & Gallace, 2011), and taste and musical notes (Crisinel & Spence, 2010).…”