Event-related potentials reveal early visual-tactile integration in the deaf
Liu Siyi,
Lu Aitao,
Tian Haiping,
Cai Yuexin,
Zhang Meifang,
Song Tianhua,
Chen Guisheng,
Qu Dianning
Affiliations
Liu Siyi
Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, Ministry of Education, China + School of Psychology, Center of Studies of Psychological Application, and Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, China
Lu Aitao
Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, Ministry of Education, China + School of Psychology, Center of Studies of Psychological Application, and Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, China
Tian Haiping
Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, Ministry of Education, China + School of Psychology, Center of Studies of Psychological Application, and Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, China + Longshan High School of Zhongshan, China
Cai Yuexin
Department of Otolaryngology, Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China + Institute of Hearing and Speech-Language Science, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
Zhang Meifang
Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, Ministry of Education, China + School of Psychology, Center of Studies of Psychological Application, and Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, China
Song Tianhua
Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, Ministry of Education, China + School of Psychology, Center of Studies of Psychological Application, and Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, China
Chen Guisheng
Department of Otolaryngology, Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China + Institute of Hearing and Speech-Language Science, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China + Zhongshan School of Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
Qu Dianning
School of Foreign Languages, Central South University, Changsha, China
This study examined visual-tactile perceptual integration in deaf and normal hearing individuals. Participants were presented with photos of faces or pictures of an oval in either a visual mode or a visual-tactile mode in a recognition learning task. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded when participants recognized real faces and pictures of ovals in learning stage. Results from the parietal-occipital region showed that photos of faces accompanied with vibration elicited more positive-going ERP responses than photos of faces without vibration as indicated in the components of P1 and N170 in both deaf and hearing individuals. However, pictures of ovals accompanied with vibration produced more positive-going ERP responses than pictures of ovals without vibration in N170, which was only found in deaf individuals. A reversed pattern was shown in the temporal region indicating that real faces with vibration elicited less positive ERPs than photos of faces without vibration in both N170 and N300 for deaf, but such pattern did not appear in N170 and N300 for normal hearing. The results suggest that multisensory integration across the visual and tactile modality involves more fundamental perceptual regions than auditory regions. Moreover, auditory deprivation played an essential role at the perceptual encoding stage of the multisensory integration.
