触覚による物体認識に関わる脳内ネットワーク

抄録

Among our senses, there has been considerable interest in the neural mechanisms underlying visual object recognition. By contrast, relatively little is known about the mechanisms underlying the haptic object perception. Here, I review the previous findings of our neuroimaging experiments on haptic object perception and propose the framework of haptic object recognition in terms of hierarchical and parallel distributed processing. I argue that different brain regions beyond the conventional somatosensory cortex are assigned to processing of different object properties, whereas such separately processed object information may be integrated with another cortical network including a node in the high-order visual cortex. Finally, I also discuss critical questions to be addressed for validating and extending this framework.