6.19 – Cross-Modal and Multisensory Interactions between Vision and Touch

It is now widely accepted that visual cortical areas are active during tactile perception, both in the sighted and in the blind. In this chapter, we review the literature on such cross-modal recruitment of the visual cortex during tactile perception. Why such cross-modal recruitment of the visual cortex occurs, the nature of the underlying perceptual representations, and how they relate to visual deprivation remain uncertain. We consider the attempts that have been made to address these issues, and offer our own synthesis of the current state of the field.