What neuroimaging tells us about sensory substitution

@article{Poirier2007WhatNT,
  title={What neuroimaging tells us about sensory substitution},
  author={Colline Poirier and Anne G. De Volder and Christian Scheiber},
  journal={Neuroscience \& Biobehavioral Reviews},
  year={2007},
  volume={31},
  pages={1064-1070}
}
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62 Citations
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62 Citations

Guidelines for quantitative and qualitative studies of sensory substitution experience
Information that is normally accessed through a sensory modality (substituted modality, e.g., vision) is provided by sensory substitution devices (SSDs) through an alternative modality such as…
Sensory substitution as an artificially acquired synaesthesia
Sensory Substitution and Multimodal Mental Imagery
TLDR
It is claimed that sensory substitution assisted “vision” is neither vision nor tactile perception, because it is not perception at all; it is mental imagery: visual mental imagery triggered by tactile sensory stimulation.
Mixing up the Senses: Sensory Substitution Is Not a Form of Artificially Induced Synaesthesia.
TLDR
It is found that sensory substitution does not fulfil the essential criteria that characterise synaesthesia and thus, the 'artificial synesthesia' view of sensory substitution should be rejected.
The role of visual deprivation and experience on the performance of sensory substitution devices
Individual Differences in Sensory Substitution.
TLDR
Those studies that investigated the individual differences at the behavioural, neural, and phenomenological levels when using a sensory substitution device are reviewed to highlight how taking into account individual differences has consequences for the optimization and learning of sensory substitution devices.
Reading the World through the Skin and Ears: A New Perspective on Sensory Substitution
TLDR
It is shown why the analogy with reading provides a better explanation of the actual findings, that is, both of the positive results achieved and of the limitations noticed across the field of research on sensory substitution.
Looking into Task-Specific Activation Using a Prosthesis Substituting Vision with Audition
TLDR
FMRI induced a similar recruitment of frontoparietal brain areas in blindfolded sighted subjects as the corresponding tasks using the same stimuli in the same subjects in vision and observed a similar preference of the right superior parietal lobule for spatial localization over orientation processing in both sensory modalities.
Sensory rehabilitation in the plastic brain.
Recruitment of Occipital Cortex during Sensory Substitution Training Linked to Subjective Experience of Seeing in People with Blindness
TLDR
The findings support the notion that the conscious experience of seeing is linked to the activation of occipital brain regions in people with blindness and indicate that provision of visual information can be achieved through non-visual sensory modalities which may help to minimize the disability of blind individuals.
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