Overview
- Peer-reviewed results in Nature show that watching others being touched or hurt activates touch-processing regions in patterns matching the observed body part.
- Researchers report multiple somatotopic maps within visual cortex, demonstrating that visual areas encode bodily reference frames typically linked to touch.
- The team identified eight body maps and two alignment schemes: dorsal regions align with visual-field position, whereas ventral regions align with body-part identity.
- The evidence comes from novel analyses of fMRI data collected as participants viewed Hollywood film clips, providing naturalistic but controlled stimuli.
- The authors note potential applications in studying social perception and neurodevelopmental differences and in guiding future neurotechnology and AI, which remain preliminary and need further validation.