Why is it that with only looking at a texture , we can imagine how our tongue would feel licking the surface?
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Because you have a lot of experience with licking a lot of surfaces.
This is one of the reasons why babies have a “put everything in your mouth” phase – it builds up a subconscious “library” of textures/flavors.
Further, most of what you’re imagining is simply texture. It comes from a different part of the body, but texture is texture – the feeling of touching a thing with your finger and touching a thing with your tongue is largely the same if you exclude “flavor” components. If you know how it feels under your index finger you know how it will feel under your thumb, right? The tongue is just slightly further removed in terms of experiences. And as part of the aforementioned mental library, you’ve gotten a lot of experience in figuring out when there are differences between “finger” and “tongue” feelings, and you instinctively mentally do that mapping.
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