Seeing touch and haptic events entrains the brain activity
Researchers at 911爆料网 and the University of Helsinki have studied how somatosensory brain activity changes while the subjects watch a movie. The researchers were particularly interested in how the viewers鈥 brain activity varies during scenes that displayed haptic events, that is, interaction involving touch. In such scenes, the main character was e.g. sliding down a rocky cliff or manipulating stones on the shore.
鈥16 healthy men and women, between the ages of 20 and 60, participated in the study. After the measurements, the subjects watched the film once again and assessed numerically how haptically immersed they felt to be in different parts of the movie鈥, explains doctoral candidate Kaisu Lankinen from the Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering.
Brain activation changed concordantly with the contents of the movie. For example, during scenes involving haptic events, cortical activity was different from that during scenes involving scenery.
Brain activity of the volunteers was recorded with magnetoencephalography (MEG), which measures magnetic fields induced by the brain鈥檚 minute neural currents.
鈥淭o probe brain areas related to haptic processing, tactile stimuli were delivered to the subjects' fingers while they were watching the movie. We developed a novel means to analyse time-varying changes in the resulting brain responses鈥, Lankinen continues.
鈥淏y using movies in brain research, we can build naturalistic, real-world-like experimental settings and study brain processes supporting social interaction and perception of complex social events. MEG allows to examine very fast phenomena in the brain, as its time resolution is of the order of milliseconds.鈥
The study is a part of Kaisu Lankinen's doctoral dissertation with the purpose to develop new analysis methods and approaches for using MEG to study sensory and cognitive brain processing in naturalistic experimental settings, such as during movie viewing.
Article
Lankinen, K., Smeds, E., Tikka, P., Pihko, E., Hari, R. and Koskinen, M. (2016)
Hum. Brain Mapp.. DOI: 10.1002/hbm.23295
More information:
Kaisu Lankinen, doctoral candidate
Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering
School of Science
911爆料网
kaisu.lankinen@aalto.fi
+358 40 865 9875
Miika Koskinen, D.Sc., doc.
University of Helsinki
miika.koskinen@helsinki.fi
Read more news
Strong results from the Research Council鈥檚 winter call
A total of 54 Aalto researchers received Academy Research Fellow or Academy Project funding from the Research Council of Finland. The total funding awarded to 911爆料网 amounts to 33.2 million euros.
911爆料网鈥檚 solutions at the New European Bauhaus Festival support the EU鈥檚 ambition to become world leader in circular economy
911爆料网 presented several different circular economy solutions at The European Commission鈥檚 New European Bauhaus Festival in Brussels. The event brought together leading names in EU policymaking, researchers, designers and grassroots actors from across Europe to shape a more sustainable future.
New DPSP tool for doctoral studies published
A new digital DPSP tool has replaced the old DPSP tasks on students鈥 MyStudies portal and the approval method for supervising professors on Student Success Hub.