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A GENTLE caress may help you see better, say scientists in London. Their
finding suggests that regions of the brain dedicated to the individual senses
communicate with each other in more sophisticated ways than anyone previously
thought.

Emiliano Macaluso at University College London and colleagues there and at
the Institute of Neurology asked 12 people to look out for a flash of light
either near their right hand or near their left. At the very moment the light
flashed some of the volunteers also felt a gentle vibration in their index
finger. For some the vibration was in the same hand as the light flash, others
felt it in the opposite hand. All the while, their brains were being monitored
by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measured activity in
different regions.

The researchers found that when the hand was touched on the same side as the
light appeared, the lingual gyrus, the region at the back of the brain involved
in seeing, was significantly more active than when there was no touch.
Conversely, when the hand was touched on the opposite side, activity in that
region dropped slightly.

Researchers know that some so-called 鈥渕ultimodal鈥� neurons can be stimulated
by more than one sense. But Macaluso insists that the neurons in this brain
region are dedicated to vision alone. He and his team believe that the brain鈥檚
visual areas may receive a stimulating boost from information travelling back
from multimodal areas elsewhere in the brain that respond to touch and
vision.

Macaluso says that many sensory experiences involve more than one
sense鈥攜ou both see and feel a fly walking on your hand, for instance. He
believes that by boosting each other, the various senses may help augment our
perception.