if you reframe the traditional view of how the cortex is organized. As I mentioned, the primary visual cortex has typically been thought of as the region that processes input from the eyes. But what if instead it was a region that processed information about shape, no matter what organ that information came from? Most of the time, shape information comes from the eyes, but sometimes—such as in this experiment—it can come from touch. Similarly, the primary auditory cortex might not be tailored for interpreting sounds, per se, but rather frequency information of any kind, including but not limited to sounds.
This is interesting stuff indeed. Shape is processed in the visual cortex but with input from other senses. The same is true of frequency, be that sound or taps on the skin.
For us designers it allows us to move beyond the sense we can interact with, vision and sound. Movement and animation can help us tap into other ‘senses’.