New Year Publication for Dr Kirsten McKenzie

Dr Kirsten McKenzie has started 2012 with a publication in the year's first issue of Acta Psychologica. This paper details two studies in which cross-modal manipulations were used to study people's tendency to experience tactile misperceptions. In the first study it was demonstrated that people do not need prior experience of cross-modal stimuli in order for illusory tactile sensations to be induced visually, and in the second study it was found that the likelihood of reporting an illusory sensation can be altered through training. These results have important implications for the diagnosis and treatment of people with somatosensory disorders or medically unexplained symptoms.

Kirsten J. McKenzie, Donna M. Lloyd, Richard J. Brown, Faye Plummer, Ellen Poliakoff (2012) Investigating the mechanisms of visually-evoked tactile sensations. Acta Psychologica, 139, 46–53.