Multisensory Shape Processing

Abstract

The processing of shape is one of the most fundamental abilities of the human brain enabling us to efficiently recognize and interact with objects in the environment. To date, the vast majority of research into shape processing has been conducted in the visual modality. Given the importance of touch for interacting and manipulating objects—both in the early stage of human development as well as in general—here we argue that shape and object representations should be regarded as multisensory entities. Spurred by new developments in multisensory rendering technologies and rapid prototyping, recent research has advanced from the investigation of lower-level properties of multisensory processing to that of higher-level object processing. In this chapter, we present a framework for studying multisensory shape processing and discuss results from experiments based on this framework. Taken together, these research areas provide a more complete picture of how we see and grasp the world.