Talk:Observed touch

Reviewer A:I found the paper interesting and well written except the last paragraph dedicated to “ Mirror-Touch Synaesthesia” which should be reworked since it is not clear for me, particularly when the author refers to the paper by Banissy&Ward (2007)

Reviewer B: Jamie Ward provides a useful review of the literature on observed touch. I have only some minor comments that hopefully will imprrove the ms.

The ms starts with a definition of "observed touch" for which the author says that it is a "purely visual event". However, strictly speaking this is not true since the experiments reported either involve felt touch after the obseravtion of touch or concurrent touch withy vision of touch (e.g. rubber hand illusion, RHI)

A clarification is needed for the phrase "unobserved touch" (top of page 2). What does the author mean?

Paragraph 2, page 2: "the thing" should be replaced by "paintbrush" or "tactile stimulator"

End of paragraph 2, page 2. The author is right in saying that the inteplay between observed touch and felt touch depends on self-other similarity, but the effect may be bi-directional. The author may wish to see the recent paper Tsakiris M (2008) Looking for Myself: Current Multisensory Input Alters Self-Face Recognition. PLoS ONE 3(12): e4040. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0004040 that shows how shared multisensory experience can in turn influence self-face recognition and perceived similarity betweens self and other.

Paragraph 3 , page 2 "true location" should be "felt location". In RHI experimenters ask participants to judge the felt location of their hand, and not the true location.