The DOI matches its Crossref record; 85 of the 85 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Sense of Touch: Embodied Simulation in a Visuotactile Mirroring Mechanism for Observed Animate or Inanimate Touch
Abstract
Previous studies have shown a shared neural circuitry in the somatosensory cortices for the experience of one's own body being touched and the sight of intentional touch. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the present study aimed to elucidate whether the activation of a visuotactile mirroring mechanism during touch observation applies to the sight of any touch, that is, whether it is independent of the intentionality of observed touching agent. During fMRI scanning, healthy participants viewed video clips depicting a touch that was intentional or accidental, and occurring between animate or inanimate objects. Analyses showed equal overlapping activation for all the touch observation conditions and the experience of one's own body being touched in the bilateral secondary somatosensory cortex (SII), left inferior parietal lobule (IPL)/supramarginal gyrus, bilateral temporal-occipital junction, and left precentral gyrus. A significant difference between the sight of an intentional touch, compared to an accidental touch, was found in the left primary somatosensory cortex (SI/Brodmann's area [BA] 2). Interestingly, activation in SI/BA 2 significantly correlated with the degree of intentionality of the observed touch stimuli as rated by participants. Our findings show that activation of a visuotactile mirroring mechanism for touch observation might underpin an abstract notion of touch, whereas activation in SI might reflect a human tendency to “resonate” more with a present or assumed intentional touching agent.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain
Talairach, J., & Tournoux, P. (1988) · Medical Entomology and Zoology · Cited by 11,798
AFNI: Software for analysis and visualization of functional magnetic resonance neuroimages
Cox, R. W. (1996) · Computers and Biomedical Research · doi:10.1006/cbmr.1996.0014 · Cited by 10,913
(1982) · Trends in Neurosciences · doi:10.1016/0166-2236(82)90076-5 · Cited by 9,089
Rizzolatti, G., & Craighero, L. (2004) · Annual Review of Neuroscience · doi:10.1146/annurev.neuro.27.070203.144230 · Cited by 7,433
Action recognition in the premotor cortex
Gallese, V., Fadiga, L., Fogassi, L., & Rizzolatti, G. (1996) · Brain · doi:10.1093/brain/119.2.593 · Cited by 4,968
Self-citationPremotor cortex and the recognition of motor actions
Rizzolatti, G., Fadiga, L., Gallese, V., & Fogassi, L. (1996) · Cognitive Brain Research · doi:10.1016/0926-6410(95)00038-0 · Cited by 4,870
Self-citationFederation Proceedings: Water and Electrolyte Losses in Cholera
Phillips, R. A. (2009) · Nutrition Reviews · doi:10.1111/j.1753-4887.1982.tb05283.x · Cited by 3,934
Empathy for Pain Involves the Affective but not Sensory Components of Pain
Singer, T., Seymour, B., O'Doherty, J., Kaube, H., Dolan, R. J., & Frith, C. D. (2004) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1093535 · Cited by 3,929
Neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the understanding and imitation of action
Rizzolatti, G., Fogassi, L., & Gallese, V. (2001) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/35090060 · Cited by 3,302
Self-citationForman, S. D., Cohen, J. D., Fitzgerald, M., Eddy, W. F., Mintun, M. A., & Noll, D. C. (1995) · Magnetic Resonance in Medicine · doi:10.1002/mrm.1910330508 · Cited by 3,202
Cited by
Discriminative and affective touch: Sensing and feeling.
McGlone, F., Wessberg, J., & Olausson, H. (2014) · Neuron · doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2014.05.001 · Cited by 1,112
Bernhardt, B. C., & Singer, T. (2012) · Annual Review of Neuroscience · doi:10.1146/annurev-neuro-062111-150536 · Cited by 952
Brain regions with mirror properties: A meta-analysis of 125 human fMRI studies
Molenberghs, P., Cunnington, R., & Mattingley, J. B. (2012) · Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2011.07.004 · Cited by 932
Somatosensation in social perception
Keysers, C., Kaas, J. H., & Gazzola, V. (2010) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn2833 · Cited by 787
What is so special about embodied simulation?
Gallese, V., & Sinigaglia, C. (2011) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2011.09.003 · Cited by 684
Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- Ebisch, S. J. H., Perrucci, M. G., Ferretti, A., Del Gratta, C., Romani, G. L., & Gallese, V.
- Venue
- Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
- Publisher
- MIT Press - Journals
- Published
- 2008-09-01
- Volume
- 20
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 1611-1623
- ISSN
- 0898-929X (ISSN-L)
- 1530-8898
- OpenAlex
- W2097056045
- Cited by
- 254
- References
- 85
- FWCI
- 19.11
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The Sense of Touch: Embodied Simulation in a Visuotactile Mirroring Mechanism for Observed Animate or Inanimate Touch. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1162/jocn.2008.20111
- The paper
- Ebisch, S. J. H., Perrucci, M. G., Ferretti, A., Del Gratta, C., Romani, G. L., & Gallese, V. (2008). The Sense of Touch: Embodied Simulation in a Visuotactile Mirroring Mechanism for Observed Animate or Inanimate Touch. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2008.20111
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.