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SUMMARY:Quality and Location: a view from somatosensation - Professor Patr
 ick Haggard (Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience\, UCL)
DTSTART:20221104T163000Z
DTEND:20221104T180000Z
UID:TALK178088@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:John Mollon
DESCRIPTION:This talk focusses on simple skin sensations such as temperatu
 re and touch\, but aims to address somewhat foundational questions about p
 erception.  Why are sensations so qualitatively different from each other\
 , given their shared code of action potentials reaching the CNS?  ‘Label
 led line’ theories explain sensory quality in terms of a ‘label’ car
 ried by the originating receptor and nerve.  In the first part of the talk
 \, I will suggest that warmth and cold indeed function as labelled lines f
 rom the human skin\, despite surprising levels of noise in sensory quality
  perception.  The second part of the talk deals with spatial perception.  
 Classical theories postulated a distinct sensory quality of ‘thereness
 ’\, or local sign\, associated with a stimulus.  This quality was explai
 ned in terms of motor signals required to orient towards the stimulus.  Th
 ese theories frequently cited self-touch\, as when one hand strokes the ot
 her\, as an example.  The experience of spatial touch would derive from th
 e moving hand\, rather than the touched hand.  I report a series of experi
 ments testing this hypothesis\, but failing to find strong evidence for mo
 tor-based theories of space. I explore an alternative hypothesis\, that th
 e skin supports a spatial ‘tactile field’\, akin to the visual field. 
LOCATION:Ground Floor Lecture Theatre\, Department of  Psychology
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