brain senses multisensory integration
neurophilosophy | March 20, 2009The way we perceive other people has a big influence on how we interact with them. For example, attractive people are more likely to be perceived as talented than less attractive people, and this so-called "halo effect" is often reflected in our behaviour towards them. Similarly, we tend to favour people perceived to be like us over people who are perceived to be different ("in-group bias").
It turns out that the way we perceive others can also influence our own sense of touch. In a new study published in the open access journal PLoS One, researchers from the University of Bologna report that…