TY - JOUR T1 - Visual and Tactile Sensory Systems Share Common Features in Object Recognition JF - eneuro JO - eNeuro DO - 10.1523/ENEURO.0101-21.2021 VL - 8 IS - 5 SP - ENEURO.0101-21.2021 AU - Sepideh Tabrik AU - Mehdi Behroozi AU - Lara Schlaffke AU - Stefanie Heba AU - Melanie Lenz AU - Silke Lissek AU - Onur Güntürkün AU - Hubert R. Dinse AU - Martin Tegenthoff Y1 - 2021/09/01 UR - http://www.eneuro.org/content/8/5/ENEURO.0101-21.2021.abstract N2 - Although we use our visual and tactile sensory systems interchangeably for object recognition on a daily basis, little is known about the mechanism underlying this ability. This study examined how 3D shape features of objects form two congruent and interchangeable visual and tactile perceptual spaces in healthy male and female participants. Since active exploration plays an important role in shape processing, a virtual reality environment was used to visually explore 3D objects called digital embryos without using the tactile sense. In addition, during the tactile procedure, blindfolded participants actively palpated a 3D-printed version of the same objects with both hands. We first demonstrated that the visual and tactile perceptual spaces were highly similar. We then extracted a series of 3D shape features to investigate how visual and tactile exploration can lead to the correct identification of the relationships between objects. The results indicate that both modalities share the same shape features to form highly similar veridical spaces. This finding suggests that visual and tactile systems might apply similar cognitive processes to sensory inputs that enable humans to rely merely on one modality in the absence of another to recognize surrounding objects. ER -