Cognitive and brain mechanisms in sensory substitution : a contribution to the study of human perception

Sensory substitution (Bach-y-Rita et al., 1969) refers to the use of one sense to pick up information normally gathered by another sensory organ (Kaczmarek, 1995). With recent technological advances and scientific progresses, sensory substitution appears as an interesting alternative to restore some functions of a defective sensory organ (e.g. the sight in case of blindness). In the same time, our knowledge about cognitive and brain mechanisms involved in sensory substitution has considerably grown, bringing new insights into human perception and neural plasticity. In this perspective, sensory substitution can be considered both as a research topic per se and as a tool to investigate human cognition and brain functions. The present paper is an attempt to summarize the main questions examined during the last decades in this research area, to demonstrate how the study of sensory substitution enhances our understanding of human perception and brain plasticity and to draw an overview of the rehabilitation potentialities of vision sensory substitution devices.Thèse de doctorat en sciences psychologiques (PSY 3)--UCL, 200