Exploring Synesthesia and the Sense of Touch

Scratch your ear. Walk down the stairs. Pick up a cup of coffee. Without a sense of touch, it would be difficult to do any of those things, yet scientists know relatively little about this most essential of senses. This hour, we'll be talking about the sense of touch. Plus, synesthesia: five plus two equals... yellow?

Guests:

Dan Smile, doctoral candidate at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.

Mandayam A. Srinivasan, director of the Lab for Human and Machine Haptics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Kenneth L. Casey, professor of neurology and physiology at the University of Michigan; chief of neurology service at the VA Medical Center in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.