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Konik S, Beaud V, Fellrath J, Martinelli I, Guanziroli E, Molteni F, Bassolino M, Serino A. Evaluation of upper limb perception after stroke with the new Affected Limb Perception Questionnaire (ALPQ): a study protocol. BMC Neurol 2024; 24:196. [PMID: 38862898 PMCID: PMC11165777 DOI: 10.1186/s12883-024-03648-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/01/2024] [Accepted: 04/22/2024] [Indexed: 06/13/2024] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Following a stroke, patients may suffer from alterations in the perception of their own body due to an acquired deficit in body representations. While such changes may impact their quality of life as well as recovery, they are not systematically assessed in clinical practice. This study aims at providing a better understanding of the rate, evolution, and impact on recovery of upper limb (UL) body perceptions (BPs) alterations following stroke. In addition, we will investigate associations among BPs alterations items, their associations with the sensorimotor functions, UL activity, damages in brain structure and connectivity. METHODS We developed a new tool named ALPQ (for Affected Limb Perception Questionnaire) to address the present study objectives. It assesses subjective alterations in the perception of the affected UL following stroke, by measuring several dimensions, namely: anosognosia for hemiplegia, anosodiaphoria for hemiplegia, hemiasomatognosia, somatoparaphrenia, personification of the affected limb, illusion of modification of physical characteristics (temperature, weight, length), illusory movements, super- or undernumerary limb, UL disconnection, misoplegia, and involuntary movement. This study combines a cross-sectional and longitudinal design. The completed data sample will include a minimum of 60 acute and 100 sub-acute stroke patients. When possible, patients are followed up to the chronic stage. Complementary evaluations are administered to assess patients' sensorimotor and cognitive functions as well as UL activity, and brain lesions will be analysed. DISCUSSION This study will provide a better understanding of BPs alterations following stroke: their rate and evolution, as well as their associations with sensorimotor deficit, cognitive profile and UL activity, brain lesions and recovery. Ultimately, the results could support the personalization of rehabilitation strategy according to patients' UL perception to maximize their recovery. STUDY REGISTRATION The protocol for this study has been pre-registered on the Open Science Framework on July the 7th, 2021: https://osf.io/p6v7f .
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Affiliation(s)
- Stéphanie Konik
- MySpace Lab, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
| | - Valérie Beaud
- Service of Neuropsychology and Neurorehabilitation, Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
| | - Julia Fellrath
- MySpace Lab, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
- Département Hospitalier, Institution de Lavigny, Lavigny, Switzerland
| | - Isabella Martinelli
- MySpace Lab, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
- Villa Beretta Rehabilitation Center, Ospedale Valduce, Costa Masnaga, Italy
- School of Health Sciences, Institute of Health, HES-SO Valais-Wallis, Sion, Switzerland
- Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
| | | | - Franco Molteni
- Villa Beretta Rehabilitation Center, Ospedale Valduce, Costa Masnaga, Italy
| | - Michela Bassolino
- MySpace Lab, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
- School of Health Sciences, Institute of Health, HES-SO Valais-Wallis, Sion, Switzerland.
- The Sense, Innovation and Research Center, Sion and Lausanne, Switzerland.
| | - Andrea Serino
- MySpace Lab, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
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2
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Terruzzi S, Albini F, Massetti G, Etzi R, Gallace A, Vallar G. The Neuropsychological Assessment of Unilateral Spatial Neglect Through Computerized and Virtual Reality Tools: A Scoping Review. Neuropsychol Rev 2024; 34:363-401. [PMID: 36913099 PMCID: PMC10009867 DOI: 10.1007/s11065-023-09586-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/04/2021] [Accepted: 09/28/2022] [Indexed: 03/14/2023]
Abstract
Unilateral Spatial Neglect is a disabling neuropsychological deficit. Patients with spatial neglect fail to detect and report events, and to perform actions in the side of space contralateral to a hemispheric cerebral lesion. Neglect is assessed by evaluating the patients' abilities in daily life activities and by psychometric tests. Computer-based, portable and Virtual Reality technologies may provide more and precise data, and be more sensitive and informative, compared to current paper-and-pencil procedures. Studies since 2010, in which such technologies have been used, are reviewed. Forty-two articles meeting inclusion criteria are categorized according to their technological approaches (computer-, graphics tablet or tablet-, virtual reality-based assessment, and other). The results are promising. However, a definite golden standard, technologically based procedure cannot be still established. Developing technologically based tests is a laborious process, which requires technical and user experience improvements as well as normative data, to increase the evidence of efficacy for clinical evaluation of at least some of the tests considered in this review.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stefano Terruzzi
- Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo 1, Milan, 20126, Italy.
- Mind and Behavior Technological Center, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy.
- Neurocognitive Rehabilitation Center (CeRiN), University of Trento, Rovereto, Italy.
| | - Federica Albini
- Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo 1, Milan, 20126, Italy
- Mind and Behavior Technological Center, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
| | - Gemma Massetti
- Mind and Behavior Technological Center, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
- School of Medicine and Surgery, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
| | - Roberta Etzi
- Mind and Behavior Technological Center, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
| | - Alberto Gallace
- Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo 1, Milan, 20126, Italy
- Mind and Behavior Technological Center, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
| | - Giuseppe Vallar
- Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo 1, Milan, 20126, Italy.
- Mind and Behavior Technological Center, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy.
- Neuropsychological Laboratory, Istituto di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy.
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3
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Langer KG, Bogousslavsky J. Between neurology and psychiatry: The lively history of right hemisphere syndromes. Rev Neurol (Paris) 2024; 180:568-579. [PMID: 37891135 DOI: 10.1016/j.neurol.2023.07.013] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/16/2023] [Revised: 07/16/2023] [Accepted: 07/18/2023] [Indexed: 10/29/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- K G Langer
- Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, NYU Langone Health, New York, NY 10016, USA.
| | - J Bogousslavsky
- Neurocentre, Center for Brain and Nervous System Disorders, Swiss Medical Network, Clinique Valmont, Montreux, Switzerland.
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4
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Connors MH, Gibbs J, Large MM, Halligan PW. Delusions in postpartum Psychosis: Implications for cognitive theories. Cortex 2024; 177:194-208. [PMID: 38875734 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2024.04.018] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/16/2023] [Revised: 03/30/2024] [Accepted: 04/03/2024] [Indexed: 06/16/2024]
Abstract
Postpartum psychosis is a rare but serious condition that can affect women after childbirth. We present a case study of an individual with no comorbidities or psychiatric history who developed postpartum psychosis characterised by prominent misidentification delusions whilst admitted to hospital. The woman recovered quickly with medication and showed no evidence of relapse over the following three years. Whilst still symptomatic and after recovery, the patient was able to provide a detailed description of her experiences. Contemporaneous interviews and observations during her hospital admission and a subsequent detailed retrospective account provide a unique, comprehensive window into her experience of these time-limited delusions. Her case reveals important insights including the triggers for her misidentification delusions, the role of social and contextual influences on delusional beliefs, and her recall of active involvement in evaluating and discarding delusional hypotheses. These insights highlight the complexity of delusional beliefs, challenge existing theories of delusions, and help inform broader theories of belief formation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michael H Connors
- Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia; Discipline of Psychiatry and Mental Health, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia; Eastern Suburbs Mental Health Service, Prince of Wales Hospital, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
| | - Jessica Gibbs
- Eastern Suburbs Mental Health Service, Prince of Wales Hospital, Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Matthew M Large
- Discipline of Psychiatry and Mental Health, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia; Eastern Suburbs Mental Health Service, Prince of Wales Hospital, Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Peter W Halligan
- School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
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5
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O'Kane SH, Chancel M, Ehrsson HH. Hierarchical and dynamic relationships between body part ownership and full-body ownership. Cognition 2024; 246:105697. [PMID: 38364444 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105697] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/25/2023] [Revised: 12/12/2023] [Accepted: 12/13/2023] [Indexed: 02/18/2024]
Abstract
What is the relationship between experiencing individual body parts and the whole body as one's own? We theorised that body part ownership is driven primarily by the perceptual binding of visual and somatosensory signals from specific body parts, whereas full-body ownership depends on a more global binding process based on multisensory information from several body segments. To examine this hypothesis, we used a bodily illusion and asked participants to rate illusory changes in ownership over five different parts of a mannequin's body and the mannequin as a whole, while we manipulated the synchrony or asynchrony of visual and tactile stimuli delivered to three different body parts. We found that body part ownership was driven primarily by local visuotactile synchrony and could be experienced relatively independently of full-body ownership. Full-body ownership depended on the number of synchronously stimulated parts in a nonlinear manner, with the strongest full-body ownership illusion occurring when all parts received synchronous stimulation. Additionally, full-body ownership influenced body part ownership for nonstimulated body parts, and skin conductance responses provided physiological evidence supporting an interaction between body part and full-body ownership. We conclude that body part and full-body ownership correspond to different processes and propose a hierarchical probabilistic model to explain the relationship between part and whole in the context of multisensory awareness of one's own body.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sophie H O'Kane
- Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
| | - Marie Chancel
- Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden; Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Univ. Savoie Mont Blanc, CNRS, LPNC, 38000 Grenoble, France
| | - H Henrik Ehrsson
- Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
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6
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Moro V, Scandola M, Gobbetto V, Bertagnoli S, Beccherle M, Besharati S, Ponzo S, Fotopoulou A, Jenkinson PM. Examining the role of self-reported somatosensory sensations in body (dis)ownership: A scoping review and empirical study of patients with a disturbed sense of limb ownership. Neuropsychologia 2024; 194:108776. [PMID: 38141962 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2023.108776] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/03/2023] [Revised: 12/20/2023] [Accepted: 12/20/2023] [Indexed: 12/25/2023]
Abstract
Patients with a disturbed sense of limb ownership (DSO) offer a unique window of insight into the multisensory processes contributing to the sense of body ownership. A limited amount of past research has examined the role of sensory deficits in DSO, and even less is known regarding the role of patient self-reported somatosensory sensations in the pathogenesis of DSO. To address this lack of knowledge we first conducted a systematic scoping review following PRISMA-SR guidelines, examining current research into somatosensory deficits and patient self-reported somatosensory sensations in patients with DSO. Eighty studies, including 277 DSO patients, were identified. The assessment of sensory deficits was generally limited in scope and quality, and deficits in tactile sensitivity and proprioception were most frequently found. The reporting of somatosensory sensations was even less frequent, with instances of paraesthesia (pins-and-needles), stiffness/rigidity, numbness and warmth, coldness and heaviness amongst the deficits recorded. In a second part of the study, we sought to directly address the lack of evidence concerning the impact of patient self-reported somatosensory sensations in DSO by measuring DSO and self-reported somatosensory sensations in a large (n = 121) sample of right-hemisphere stroke patients including N = 65 with DSO and N = 56 hemiplegic controls. Results show that feelings of coldness and stiffness modulate DSO symptoms. Sense of heaviness and numbness are more frequent in patients with DSO but do not have a clear impact on disownership symptomology. Although preliminary, these results suggest a role of subjective sensations about the felt body in the sense of limb ownership.
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Affiliation(s)
- Valentina Moro
- Npsy-Lab.Vr, Department of Human Sciences, University of Verona, Italy.
| | - Michele Scandola
- Npsy-Lab.Vr, Department of Human Sciences, University of Verona, Italy
| | | | - Sara Bertagnoli
- Social and Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Psychology, University La Sapienza, Roma, Italy
| | | | - Sahba Besharati
- Department of Psychology, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
| | | | - Aikaterini Fotopoulou
- Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, UK
| | - Paul M Jenkinson
- Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, UK; ISN Psychology, Institute for Social Neuroscience, Melbourne, Australia.
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7
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Cataldo A, Crivelli D, Bottini G, Gomi H, Haggard P. Active self-touch restores bodily proprioceptive spatial awareness following disruption by 'rubber hand illusion'. Proc Biol Sci 2024; 291:20231753. [PMID: 38228504 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2023.1753] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/04/2023] [Accepted: 12/08/2023] [Indexed: 01/18/2024] Open
Abstract
Bodily self-awareness relies on a constant integration of visual, tactile, proprioceptive, and motor signals. In the 'rubber hand illusion' (RHI), conflicting visuo-tactile stimuli lead to changes in self-awareness. It remains unclear whether other, somatic signals could compensate for the alterations in self-awareness caused by visual information about the body. Here, we used the RHI in combination with robot-mediated self-touch to systematically investigate the role of tactile, proprioceptive and motor signals in maintaining and restoring bodily self-awareness. Participants moved the handle of a leader robot with their right hand and simultaneously received corresponding tactile feedback on their left hand from a follower robot. This self-touch stimulation was performed either before or after the induction of a classical RHI. Across three experiments, active self-touch delivered after-but not before-the RHI, significantly reduced the proprioceptive drift caused by RHI, supporting a restorative role of active self-touch on bodily self-awareness. The effect was not present during involuntary self-touch. Unimodal control conditions confirmed that both tactile and motor components of self-touch were necessary to restore bodily self-awareness. We hypothesize that active self-touch transiently boosts the precision of proprioceptive representation of the touched body part, thus counteracting the visual capture effects that underlie the RHI.
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Affiliation(s)
- Antonio Cataldo
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AZ, UK
| | - Damiano Crivelli
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AZ, UK
- Department of Brain and Behavioural Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
- NeuroMi, Milan Centre for Neuroscience, Milan, Italy
| | - Gabriella Bottini
- Department of Brain and Behavioural Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
- NeuroMi, Milan Centre for Neuroscience, Milan, Italy
- Cognitive Neuropsychology Centre, ASST Grande Ospedale Metropolitano Niguarda, Milano, Italy
| | - Hiroaki Gomi
- NTT Communication Science Laboratories, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, Atsugi, Japan
| | - Patrick Haggard
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AZ, UK
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8
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Bufacchi RJ, Battaglia-Mayer A, Iannetti GD, Caminiti R. Cortico-spinal modularity in the parieto-frontal system: A new perspective on action control. Prog Neurobiol 2023; 231:102537. [PMID: 37832714 DOI: 10.1016/j.pneurobio.2023.102537] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/02/2023] [Revised: 08/22/2023] [Accepted: 10/04/2023] [Indexed: 10/15/2023]
Abstract
Classical neurophysiology suggests that the motor cortex (MI) has a unique role in action control. In contrast, this review presents evidence for multiple parieto-frontal spinal command modules that can bypass MI. Five observations support this modular perspective: (i) the statistics of cortical connectivity demonstrate functionally-related clusters of cortical areas, defining functional modules in the premotor, cingulate, and parietal cortices; (ii) different corticospinal pathways originate from the above areas, each with a distinct range of conduction velocities; (iii) the activation time of each module varies depending on task, and different modules can be activated simultaneously; (iv) a modular architecture with direct motor output is faster and less metabolically expensive than an architecture that relies on MI, given the slow connections between MI and other cortical areas; (v) lesions of the areas composing parieto-frontal modules have different effects from lesions of MI. Here we provide examples of six cortico-spinal modules and functions they subserve: module 1) arm reaching, tool use and object construction; module 2) spatial navigation and locomotion; module 3) grasping and observation of hand and mouth actions; module 4) action initiation, motor sequences, time encoding; module 5) conditional motor association and learning, action plan switching and action inhibition; module 6) planning defensive actions. These modules can serve as a library of tools to be recombined when faced with novel tasks, and MI might serve as a recombinatory hub. In conclusion, the availability of locally-stored information and multiple outflow paths supports the physiological plausibility of the proposed modular perspective.
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Affiliation(s)
- R J Bufacchi
- Neuroscience and Behaviour Laboratory, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Rome, Italy; International Center for Primate Brain Research (ICPBR), Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology (CEBSIT), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Shanghai, China
| | - A Battaglia-Mayer
- Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, University of Rome, Sapienza, Italy
| | - G D Iannetti
- Neuroscience and Behaviour Laboratory, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Rome, Italy; Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology, University College London (UCL), London, UK
| | - R Caminiti
- Neuroscience and Behaviour Laboratory, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Rome, Italy.
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9
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Mancuso M, Basagni B, Bolognini N, Vallar G, Damora A. Can you please find my upper limb? Somatoparaphrenia without personal neglect: a new case report. Neurol Sci 2023; 44:4135-4137. [PMID: 37470919 DOI: 10.1007/s10072-023-06963-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/18/2023] [Accepted: 07/11/2023] [Indexed: 07/21/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Mauro Mancuso
- Functional Recovery and Rehabilitation Unit, National Health Service, Grosseto, Italy
- Clinica di Riabilitazione Toscana (CRT), Montevarchi, Arezzo, Italy
| | - Benedetta Basagni
- Clinica di Riabilitazione Toscana (CRT), Montevarchi, Arezzo, Italy.
| | - Nadia Bolognini
- Department of Psychology & NeuroMI e Milan Centre for Neuroscience, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
- Laboratory of Neuropsychology - Department of Neurorehabilitation Sciences, IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy
| | - Giuseppe Vallar
- Department of Psychology & NeuroMI e Milan Centre for Neuroscience, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
| | - Alessio Damora
- Clinica di Riabilitazione Toscana (CRT), Montevarchi, Arezzo, Italy
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10
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Arnhart L. The evolutionary psychology of ownership is rooted in the Lockean liberal principle of self-ownership. Behav Brain Sci 2023; 46:e325. [PMID: 37813407 DOI: 10.1017/s0140525x23001358] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/11/2023]
Abstract
The psychology of ownership is rooted in self-ownership. The human brain has an evolved interoceptive sense of owning the body that supports self-ownership and the ownership of external things as extensions of the self-owning self. In this way, evolutionary neuroscience supports a Lockean liberal conception of equal natural rights rooted in natural self-ownership.
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Affiliation(s)
- Larry Arnhart
- Department of Political Science, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL, USA ; Darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com
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11
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Salvato G, Crivelli D, Gandola M, Bottini G. Self-touch facilitates the recognition of the dis-owned left hand in somatoparaphrenia: a single case study. Neurocase 2023; 29:133-140. [PMID: 38650434 DOI: 10.1080/13554794.2024.2345405] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/04/2023] [Accepted: 04/15/2024] [Indexed: 04/25/2024]
Abstract
We investigated whether self-administered tactile stimulation could act as a temporary restorative mechanism for body ownership disorders, both implicitly and explicitly. We tested this hypothesis in a patient with somatoparaphrenia, who displayed increased accuracy in explicitly recognizing their left hand during self-touch. Furthermore, the patient implicitly perceived their hand and the experimenter's hand as more belonging to their own body compared to conditions where vision was the sole sensory input. These findings highlight the importance of self-touch in maintaining a coherent body representation, while also demonstrating the potential dissociation between the recovery of explicit and implicit perceptions of body ownership.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gerardo Salvato
- Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
- NeuroMi, Milan Centre for Neuroscience, Milan, Italy
- Cognitive Neuropsychology Centre, ASST Grande Ospedale Metropolitano Niguarda, Milano, Italy
| | - Damiano Crivelli
- Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
- NeuroMi, Milan Centre for Neuroscience, Milan, Italy
| | - Martina Gandola
- Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
- NeuroMi, Milan Centre for Neuroscience, Milan, Italy
- Cognitive Neuropsychology Centre, ASST Grande Ospedale Metropolitano Niguarda, Milano, Italy
| | - Gabriella Bottini
- Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
- NeuroMi, Milan Centre for Neuroscience, Milan, Italy
- Cognitive Neuropsychology Centre, ASST Grande Ospedale Metropolitano Niguarda, Milano, Italy
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12
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Apelian C, Terhune DB, De Vignemont F. Hypnotic suggestion versus sensory modulation of bodily awareness. PLoS One 2023; 18:e0291493. [PMID: 37699046 PMCID: PMC10497174 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0291493] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/02/2022] [Accepted: 08/30/2023] [Indexed: 09/14/2023] Open
Abstract
Bodily awareness arises from somatosensory, vestibular, and visual inputs but cannot be reduced to these incoming sensory signals. Cognitive factors are known to also impact bodily awareness, though their specific influence is poorly understood. Here we systematically compared the effects of sensory (bottom-up) and cognitive (top-down) manipulations on the estimated size of body parts. Toward this end, in a repeated-measures design, we sought to induce the illusion that the right index finger was elongating by vibrating the biceps tendon of the left arm whilst participants grasped the tip of their right index finger (Lackner illusion; bottom-up) and separately by hypnotic suggestion (top-down), with a sham version of the Lackner illusion as an active control condition. The effects of these manipulations were assessed with perceptual and motor tasks to capture different components of the representation of body size. We found that hypnotic suggestion significantly induced the illusion in both tasks relative to the sham condition. The magnitudes of these effects were stronger than those in the Lackner illusion condition, which only produced a significantly stronger illusion than the sham condition in the perceptual task. We further observed that illusion magnitude significantly correlated across tasks and conditions, suggesting partly shared mechanisms. These results are in line with theories of separate but interacting representational processes for perception and action and highlight the influence of cognitive factors on low-level body representations.
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Affiliation(s)
- C. Apelian
- Département d’études Cognitives, Institut Jean Nicod, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL University, Paris, France
- ARCHE, Formation, Paris, France
| | - D. B. Terhune
- Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, United Kingdom
- Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - F. De Vignemont
- Département d’études Cognitives, Institut Jean Nicod, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL University, Paris, France
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13
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Ciorli T, Pia L. Spatial perspective and identity in visual awareness of the bodily self-other distinction. Sci Rep 2023; 13:14994. [PMID: 37696861 PMCID: PMC10495455 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-42107-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/04/2023] [Accepted: 09/05/2023] [Indexed: 09/13/2023] Open
Abstract
Spatial perspective and identity of visual bodily stimuli are two key cues for the self-other distinction. However, how they emerge into visual awareness is largely unknown. Here, self- or other-hands presented in first- or third-person perspective were compared in a breaking-Continuous Flash Suppression paradigm (Experiment 1) measuring the time the stimuli need to access visual awareness, and in a Binocular Rivalry paradigm (Experiment 2), measuring predominance in perceptual awareness. Results showed that, irrespectively of identity, first-person perspective speeded up the access, whereas the third-person one increased the dominance. We suggest that the effect of first-person perspective represents an unconscious prioritization of an egocentric body coding important for visuomotor control. On the other hand, the effect of third-person perspective indicates a conscious advantage of an allocentric body representation fundamental for detecting the presence of another intentional agent. Summarizing, the emergence of self-other distinction into visual awareness would strongly depend on the interplay between spatial perspectives, with an inverse prioritization before and after conscious perception. On the other hand, identity features might rely on post-perceptual processes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tommaso Ciorli
- SAMBA (SpAtial, Motor and Bodily Awareness) Research Group, Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Via Verdi 10, 10123, Turin, Italy
| | - Lorenzo Pia
- SAMBA (SpAtial, Motor and Bodily Awareness) Research Group, Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Via Verdi 10, 10123, Turin, Italy.
- NIT (Neuroscience Institute of Turin), Turin, Italy.
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14
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Crivelli D, Crotti D, Crottini F, Peviani V, Gandola M, Bottini G, Salvato G. Skin temperature changes in response to body ownership modulation vary according to the side of stimulation. Physiol Behav 2023; 265:114142. [PMID: 36889486 DOI: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2023.114142] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/16/2022] [Revised: 02/14/2023] [Accepted: 02/28/2023] [Indexed: 03/08/2023]
Abstract
A growing body of research has shown that a unilateral alteration in the sense of limb ownership is associated with the cooling of a limb's temperature. However, the recent emergence of contradictory results calls into question the existence of a relationship between this physiological reaction and the sense of body ownership. In the light of evidence that the malleability of the sense of hand ownership differs based on the preferential motor use of the hand to which the illusion is applied, one might observe the same lateralised pattern in the skin temperature cooling. In particular, if skin temperature change is a signature of body ownership, we expected a stronger illusion and reduction in skin temperature when altering ownership alteration of the left hand compared to the right hand in dextral individuals. To test this hypothesis, we selectively perturbated body ownership of the left or right hand in 24 healthy participants in different experimental sessions using the Mirror-Box Illusion (MBI) paradigm. Participants were asked to tap synchronously or asynchronously at a constant rhythm with their left and right index fingers against two parallel mirrors while looking at their reflected right/left hand. Skin temperature was measured before and after each MBI application, and explicit judgments of ownership and proprioceptive drift were collected. The results showed a consistent cooling of the hand's temperature only when the illusion was performed on the left hand. Proprioceptive drift exhibited the same pattern. In contrast, the explicit judgment of ownership of the reflected hand was similar across the two hands. These data provide evidence in favor of a specific laterality effect of the physiological response to an induced alteration of body part ownership. Moreover, they highlight the possibility of a direct link between proprioception and skin temperature.
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Affiliation(s)
- Damiano Crivelli
- Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy; NeuroMi, Milan Centre for Neuroscience, Milan, Italy
| | - Daniele Crotti
- Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
| | - Francesco Crottini
- Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
| | - Valeria Peviani
- Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy; Sensorimotor Lab, Donders Institute for Cognition, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands
| | - Martina Gandola
- Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy; NeuroMi, Milan Centre for Neuroscience, Milan, Italy; Cognitive Neuropsychology Centre, ASST Grande Ospedale Metropolitano Niguarda, Milan, Italy
| | - Gabriella Bottini
- Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy; NeuroMi, Milan Centre for Neuroscience, Milan, Italy; Cognitive Neuropsychology Centre, ASST Grande Ospedale Metropolitano Niguarda, Milan, Italy
| | - Gerardo Salvato
- Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy; NeuroMi, Milan Centre for Neuroscience, Milan, Italy; Cognitive Neuropsychology Centre, ASST Grande Ospedale Metropolitano Niguarda, Milan, Italy.
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15
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Nishiyama Y, Yamashita C, Nomura S. An illusion of disownership over one's own limb is associated with pain perception. Sci Rep 2023; 13:2801. [PMID: 36859438 PMCID: PMC9977932 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-29993-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/07/2022] [Accepted: 02/14/2023] [Indexed: 03/03/2023] Open
Abstract
Viewing one's body and even a fake/virtual body experienced as one's own has been suggested to modulate pain perception. However, what happens to pain perception when one's own body part is felt as not belonging to one? We designed a paradigm to induce an illusory feeling of disownership regarding one's limb, investigating whether the feeling affects pain threshold. Participants observed right-side images of their bodies from a third-person perspective via a head-mounted display in real-time. Following instructions, they moved their left hand while keeping their left elbow behind the upper body, so that the connection of their arm to the torso was not visible (test condition), or in front of it, so they could see the arm being part of them (control condition). Then, pain threshold was tested with a thermal stimulator. We found a significantly higher strength of disownership in the test condition than in the control condition. While there was no pain modulation within and between conditions, disownership ratings negatively correlated with pain-threshold changes, where the participants reporting explicit disownership showed lower pain-threshold changes than the others. The finding suggests that while multisensory disintegration had no modulatory effect, the individual sense of disownership was associated with pain perception.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yuta Nishiyama
- Department of Information and Management Systems Engineering, Nagaoka University of Technology, Niigata, Japan.
| | - Chihiro Yamashita
- grid.260427.50000 0001 0671 2234Department of Information and Management Systems Engineering, Nagaoka University of Technology, Niigata, Japan
| | - Shusaku Nomura
- grid.260427.50000 0001 0671 2234Department of Information and Management Systems Engineering, Nagaoka University of Technology, Niigata, Japan
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16
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Preatoni G, Dell’Eva F, Valle G, Pedrocchi A, Raspopovic S. Reshaping the full body illusion through visuo-electro-tactile sensations. PLoS One 2023; 18:e0280628. [PMID: 36724146 PMCID: PMC9891501 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0280628] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/03/2022] [Accepted: 01/04/2023] [Indexed: 02/02/2023] Open
Abstract
The physical boundaries of our body do not define what we perceive as self. This malleable representation arises from the neural integration of sensory information coming from the environment. Manipulating the visual and haptic cues produces changes in body perception, inducing the Full Body Illusion (FBI), a vastly used approach to exploring humans' perception. After pioneering FBI demonstrations, issues arose regarding its setup, using experimenter-based touch and pre-recorded videos. Moreover, its outcome measures are based mainly on subjective reports, leading to biased results, or on heterogeneous objective ones giving poor consensus on their validity. To address these limitations, we developed and tested a multisensory platform allowing highly controlled experimental conditions, thanks to the leveraged use of innovative technologies: Virtual Reality (VR) and Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS). This enabled a high spatial and temporal precision of the visual and haptic cues, efficiently eliciting FBI. While it matched the classic approach in subjective measures, our setup resulted also in significant results for all objective measurements. Importantly, FBI was elicited when all 4 limbs were multimodally stimulated but also in a single limb condition. Our results behoove the adoption of a comprehensive set of measures, introducing a new neuroscientific platform to investigate body representations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Greta Preatoni
- Department of Health Sciences and Technology, Laboratory for Neuroengineering, Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
| | - Francesca Dell’Eva
- NearLab, Department of Electronics Information and Bioengineering and We-Cobot Interdept, Lab, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy
| | - Giacomo Valle
- Department of Health Sciences and Technology, Laboratory for Neuroengineering, Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
| | - Alessandra Pedrocchi
- NearLab, Department of Electronics Information and Bioengineering and We-Cobot Interdept, Lab, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy
| | - Stanisa Raspopovic
- Department of Health Sciences and Technology, Laboratory for Neuroengineering, Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
- * E-mail:
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Moro V, Pacella V, Scandola M, Besharati S, Rossato E, Jenkinson P, Fotopoulou A. A fronto-insular-parietal network for the sense of body ownership. Cereb Cortex 2023; 33:512-522. [PMID: 35235644 PMCID: PMC7614133 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhac081] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 13.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/24/2021] [Revised: 02/07/2022] [Accepted: 02/07/2022] [Indexed: 02/04/2023] Open
Abstract
Neuropsychological disturbances in the sense of limb ownership provide unique opportunities to study the neurocognitive basis of body ownership. Previous small sample studies that showed discrete cortical lesions cannot explain why multisensory, affective, and cognitive manipulations alter disownership symptoms. We tested the novel hypothesis that disturbances in the sense of limb ownership would be associated not only with discrete cortical lesions but also with disconnections of white-matter tracts supporting specific functional networks. We drew on an advanced lesion-analysis and Bayesian statistics approach in 49 right-hemisphere patients (23 with and 26 without limb disownership). Our results reveal that disturbances in the sense of ownership are associated with lesions in the supramarginal gyrus and disconnections of a fronto-insular-parietal network, involving the frontal-insular and frontal inferior longitudinal tracts, confirming previous disconnection hypotheses. Together with previous behavioral and neuroanatomical results, these findings lead us to propose that the sense of body ownership involves the convergence of bottom-up, multisensory integration, and top-down monitoring of sensory salience based on contextual demands.
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Affiliation(s)
- V. Moro
- NPSY-Lab.VR, Department of Human Sciences, University of Verona, 37129 Verona, Italy
| | - V. Pacella
- NPSY-Lab.VR, Department of Human Sciences, University of Verona, 37129 Verona, Italy,Groupe d’Imagerie Neurofonctionnelle, Institut des Maladies Neurodégénératives-UMR 5293, CNRS, CEA University of Bordeaux, CS F-33076 Bordeaux
| | - M. Scandola
- NPSY-Lab.VR, Department of Human Sciences, University of Verona, 37129 Verona, Italy
| | - S. Besharati
- Department of Psychology, School of Human and Community Development, University of Witwatersrand, 2000 Johannesburg, South Africa,CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars program, CIFAR, Toronto, ON M5G 1M1 Canada
| | - E. Rossato
- Department of Rehabilitation, IRCSS Sacro Cuore Don Calabria, 37024, Negrar, Verona, Italy
| | - P.M. Jenkinson
- Institute for Social Neuroscience, Ivanhoe, Melbourne, Victoria. Australia
| | - A Fotopoulou
- Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College of London, London WC1E 6BT, UK
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Segil JL, Roldan LM, Graczyk EL. Measuring embodiment: A review of methods for prosthetic devices. Front Neurorobot 2022; 16:902162. [PMID: 36590084 PMCID: PMC9797051 DOI: 10.3389/fnbot.2022.902162] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/22/2022] [Accepted: 10/25/2022] [Indexed: 12/23/2022] Open
Abstract
The development of neural interfaces to provide improved control and somatosensory feedback from prosthetic limbs has initiated a new ability to probe the various dimensions of embodiment. Scientists in the field of neuroprosthetics require dependable measures of ownership, body representation, and agency to quantify the sense of embodiment felt by patients for their prosthetic limbs. These measures are critical to perform generalizable experiments and compare the utility of the new technologies being developed. Here, we review outcome measures used in the literature to evaluate the senses of ownership, body-representation, and agency. We categorize these existing measures based on the fundamental psychometric property measured and whether it is a behavioral or physiological measure. We present arguments for the efficacy and pitfalls of each measure to guide better experimental designs and future outcome measure development. The purpose of this review is to aid prosthesis researchers and technology developers in understanding the concept of embodiment and selecting metrics to assess embodiment in their research. Advances in the ability to measure the embodiment of prosthetic devices have far-reaching implications in the improvement of prosthetic limbs as well as promoting a broader understanding of ourselves as embodied agents.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jacob L. Segil
- Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, United States
- Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center, Aurora, CO, United States
| | - Leah Marie Roldan
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, United States
- Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center, Cleveland, OH, United States
| | - Emily L. Graczyk
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, United States
- Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center, Cleveland, OH, United States
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Marini M, Casile A. I can see my virtual body in a mirror: The role of visual perspective in changing implicit racial attitudes using virtual reality. Front Psychol 2022; 13:989582. [PMID: 36518959 PMCID: PMC9742480 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.989582] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/08/2022] [Accepted: 11/04/2022] [Indexed: 09/29/2023] Open
Abstract
INTRODUCTION Recent studies showed that VR is a valid tool to change implicit attitudes toward outgroup members. Here, we extended this work by investigating conditions under which virtual reality (VR) is effective in changing implicit racial attitudes. METHODS To this end, participants were embodied in a Black or White avatar and we manipulated the perspective through which they could see their virtual body. Participants in one condition, could see their virtual body both from a first-person perspective (i.e., by looking down toward themselves) and reflected in a mirror placed in front of them in the VR environment. Participants in another condition could instead see their virtual body only from a first-person perspective (i.e., by looking down toward themselves) as no mirror was placed in the VR environment. Implicit racial attitudes were assessed using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) before and immediately after the VR intervention. RESULTS Results showed that when White participants were embodied in a Black avatar compared to a White avatar, they showed a decrease in their implicit pro-White attitudes but only when they could see their virtual body both from a first-person perspective and in a mirror. DISCUSSION These results suggest that, in immersive virtual reality interventions, the possibility for participants to see their body also reflected in a mirror, might be a critical factor in changing their implicit racial attitudes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maddalena Marini
- Center for Translational Neurophysiology of Speech and Communication, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Ferrara, Italy
- Department of Psychology, University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Caserta, Italy
| | - Antonino Casile
- Center for Translational Neurophysiology of Speech and Communication, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Ferrara, Italy
- Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy
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20
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Instant disembodiment of virtual body parts. Atten Percept Psychophys 2022; 84:2725-2740. [PMID: 36045312 PMCID: PMC9630226 DOI: 10.3758/s13414-022-02544-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 07/21/2022] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
Evidence from multisensory body illusions suggests that body representations may be malleable, for instance, by embodying external objects. However, adjusting body representations to current task demands also implies that external objects become disembodied from the body representation if they are no longer required. In the current web-based study, we induced the embodiment of a two-dimensional (2D) virtual hand that could be controlled by active movements of a computer mouse or on a touchpad. Following initial embodiment, we probed for disembodiment by comparing two conditions: Participants either continued moving the virtual hand or they stopped moving and kept the hand still. Based on theoretical accounts that conceptualize body representations as a set of multisensory bindings, we expected gradual disembodiment of the virtual hand if the body representations are no longer updated through correlated visuomotor signals. In contrast to our prediction, the virtual hand was instantly disembodied as soon as participants stopped moving it. This result was replicated in two follow-up experiments. The observed instantaneous disembodiment might suggest that humans are sensitive to the rapid changes that characterize action and body in virtual environments, and hence adjust corresponding body representations particularly swiftly.
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21
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The sense of agency for brain disorders: A comprehensive review and proposed framework. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2022; 139:104759. [PMID: 35780975 DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104759] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/20/2021] [Revised: 06/24/2022] [Accepted: 06/26/2022] [Indexed: 11/21/2022]
Abstract
Sense of Agency (SoA) refers to the feeling of control over voluntary actions and the outcomes of those actions. Several brain disorders are characterized by an abnormal SoA. To date, there is no robust treatment for aberrant agency across disorders; this is, in large part, due to gaps in our understanding of the cognitive mechanisms and neural correlates of the SoA. This apparent gap stems from a lack of synthesis in established findings. As such, the current review reconciles previously established findings into a novel neurocognitive framework for future investigations of the SoA in brain disorders, which we term the Agency in Brain Disorders Framework (ABDF). In doing so, we highlight key top-down and bottom-up cues that contribute to agency prospectively (i.e., prior to action execution) and retrospectively (i.e., after action execution). We then examine brain disorders, including schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorders (ASD), obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD), and cortico-basal syndrome (CBS), within the ABDF, to demonstrate its potential utility in investigating neurocognitive mechanisms underlying phenotypically variable presentations of the SoA in brain disorders.
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22
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Bassolino M, Franza M, Guanziroli E, Sorrentino G, Canzoneri E, Colombo M, Crema A, Bertoni T, Mastria G, Vissani M, Sokolov AA, Micera S, Molteni F, Blanke O, Serino A. Body and peripersonal space representations in chronic stroke patients with upper limb motor deficits. Brain Commun 2022; 4:fcac179. [PMID: 35950092 PMCID: PMC9356734 DOI: 10.1093/braincomms/fcac179] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/28/2021] [Revised: 04/27/2022] [Accepted: 08/03/2022] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Abstract
The continuous stream of multisensory information between the brain and the body during body–environment interactions is crucial to maintain the updated representation of the perceived dimensions of body parts (metric body representation) and the space around the body (the peripersonal space). Such flow of multisensory signals is often limited by upper limb sensorimotor deficits after stroke. This would suggest the presence of systematic distortions of metric body representation and peripersonal space in chronic patients with persistent sensorimotor deficits. We assessed metric body representation and peripersonal space representation in 60 chronic stroke patients with unilateral upper limb motor deficits, in comparison with age-matched healthy controls. We also administered a questionnaire capturing explicit feelings towards the affected limb. These novel measures were analysed with respect to patients’ clinical profiles and brain lesions to investigate the neural and functional origin of putative deficits. Stroke patients showed distortions in metric body representation of the affected limb, characterized by an underestimation of the arm length and an alteration of the arm global shape. A descriptive lesion analysis (subtraction analysis) suggests that these distortions may be more frequently associated with lesions involving the superior corona radiata and the superior frontal gyrus. Peripersonal space representation was also altered, with reduced multisensory facilitation for stimuli presented around the affected limb. These deficits were more common in patients reporting pain during motion. Explorative lesion analyses (subtraction analysis, disconnection maps) suggest that the peripersonal space distortions would be more frequently associated with lesions involving the parietal operculum and white matter frontoparietal connections. Moreover, patients reported altered feelings towards the affected limb, which were associated with right brain damage, proprioceptive deficits and a lower cognitive profile. These results reveal implicit and explicit distortions involving metric body representation, peripersonal space representation and the perception of the affected limb in chronic stroke patients. These findings might have important clinical implications for the longitudinal monitoring and the treatments of often-neglected deficits in body perception and representation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michela Bassolino
- Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Center for Neuroprosthetics and Brain Mind Institute, School of Life Science, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) , Geneva 1202 , Switzerland
- Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), MySpace Lab , Lausanne 1011 , Switzerland
- Institute of Health, School of Health Sciences, HES-SO Valais-Wallis , Sion 1950 , Switzerland
| | - Matteo Franza
- Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Center for Neuroprosthetics and Brain Mind Institute, School of Life Science, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) , Geneva 1202 , Switzerland
| | - Eleonora Guanziroli
- Villa Beretta Rehabilitation Center, Valduce Hospital Como , Costa Masnaga 23845 , Italy
| | - Giuliana Sorrentino
- Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Center for Neuroprosthetics and Brain Mind Institute, School of Life Science, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) , Geneva 1202 , Switzerland
| | - Elisa Canzoneri
- Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Center for Neuroprosthetics and Brain Mind Institute, School of Life Science, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) , Geneva 1202 , Switzerland
| | - Maria Colombo
- Villa Beretta Rehabilitation Center, Valduce Hospital Como , Costa Masnaga 23845 , Italy
| | - Andrea Crema
- Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Translational Neuroengineering, Centre for Neuroprosthetics and Institute of Bioengineering, School of Engineering, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) , Geneva 1202 , Switzerland
- AGO Neurotechnologies, Sàrl , Geneva 1201 , Switzerland
| | - Tommaso Bertoni
- Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), MySpace Lab , Lausanne 1011 , Switzerland
| | - Giulio Mastria
- Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), MySpace Lab , Lausanne 1011 , Switzerland
| | - Matteo Vissani
- Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Center for Neuroprosthetics and Brain Mind Institute, School of Life Science, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) , Geneva 1202 , Switzerland
- The Biorobotics Institute and Department of Excellence in Robotics and AI, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna , Pontedera, Pisa 56025 , Italy
| | - Arseny A Sokolov
- The Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, University College London , London WC1N 3BG , UK
- Service de Neurologie, Département des Neurosciences Cliniques, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV) , Lausanne 1011 , Switzerland
| | - Silvestro Micera
- Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Translational Neuroengineering, Centre for Neuroprosthetics and Institute of Bioengineering, School of Engineering, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) , Geneva 1202 , Switzerland
- The Biorobotics Institute and Department of Excellence in Robotics and AI, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna , Pontedera, Pisa 56025 , Italy
| | - Franco Molteni
- Villa Beretta Rehabilitation Center, Valduce Hospital Como , Costa Masnaga 23845 , Italy
| | - Olaf Blanke
- Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Center for Neuroprosthetics and Brain Mind Institute, School of Life Science, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) , Geneva 1202 , Switzerland
- Department of Clinical Neuroscience, University of Geneva Medical School , Geneva 1211 , Switzerland
| | - Andrea Serino
- Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Center for Neuroprosthetics and Brain Mind Institute, School of Life Science, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) , Geneva 1202 , Switzerland
- Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), MySpace Lab , Lausanne 1011 , Switzerland
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Preston C, Kirk E. Exploring the development of high-level contributions to body representation using the rubber hand illusion and the monkey hand illusion. J Exp Child Psychol 2022; 223:105477. [PMID: 35753196 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105477] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/22/2021] [Revised: 05/19/2022] [Accepted: 05/19/2022] [Indexed: 12/01/2022]
Abstract
During development our body undergoes significant changes, yet we are able to maintain a coherent experience of our body and sense of self. Bodily experience is thought to comprise integration of multisensory signals (vision, touch, and proprioception) constrained by top-down knowledge of body appearance. Evidence from developmental studies suggests that low-level multisensory integration develops throughout childhood, reaching adult levels by 10 years of age. However, how high-level cognitive knowledge changes during childhood to constrain our multisensory body experience is unknown. This study describes four experiments examining high-level contributions to the bodily experience in children compared with adults using the rubber hand illusion and a monkey hand illusion. We found that children (5-17 years of age) exhibited more flexible body representations, showing stronger illusions for small and fantastical (monkey) fake hands compared with adults. Conversely, using a task indirectly capturing changes in hand size, we found that children and adults demonstrated statistically equivalent increases and decreases in hand size following illusions over large and small hands, respectively. Interestingly, at baseline children showed a bias in reporting larger hand size judgments that decreased with age. Finally, we did not find a relationship between individual differences in fantasy proneness and illusion strength for a fantastical (monkey) hand for children or adults, suggesting that developmental changes of top-down constraints are not purely driven by more diffuse boundaries between imagination and reality. These data suggest that high-level constraints acting on our multisensory body experience change during development, allowing children a more flexible bodily experience compared with adults.
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Affiliation(s)
- Catherine Preston
- Department of Psychology, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, UK.
| | - Elizabeth Kirk
- School of Psychology and Sport Science, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge CB1 1PT, UK
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COGNITIVE AND BEHAVIORAL DISORDERS IN PATIENTS WITH SUPERIOR PARIETAL LOBULE INFARCTS. Neurol Sci 2022:1-9. [PMID: 35686295 DOI: 10.1017/cjn.2022.81] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/07/2022]
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25
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Serrahima C. Sensory fields: the visual and the bodily. PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 2022; 180:679-700. [PMID: 36815963 PMCID: PMC9925565 DOI: 10.1007/s11098-022-01838-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 05/21/2022] [Indexed: 06/18/2023]
Abstract
Philosophers of perception have been readier to postulate the existence of a visual field than to acknowledge sensory fields in other modalities. In this paper, I argue that the set of phenomenal features that philosophers have relied on when positing a visual field aptly characterise, mutatis mutandis, bodily sensation. I argue, in particular, that in localised bodily sensations we experience the body as a sensory field. I first motivate this claim for the case of haptic touch, and then generalise it to other kinds of bodily sensation. I demonstrate the theoretical fruitfulness of this notion of a bodily field for the debate on the phenomenology of bodily ownership.
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26
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A case of neglect. Cortex 2022; 154:254-258. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2022.06.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/21/2022] [Revised: 05/28/2022] [Accepted: 06/02/2022] [Indexed: 11/21/2022]
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27
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No self-advantage in recognizing photographs of one's own hand: experimental and meta-analytic evidence. Exp Brain Res 2022; 240:2221-2233. [PMID: 35596072 PMCID: PMC9458563 DOI: 10.1007/s00221-022-06385-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/26/2022] [Accepted: 05/04/2022] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
Abstract
Visually recognising one’s own body is important both for controlling movement and for one’s sense of self. Twenty previous studies asked healthy adults to make rapid recognition judgements about photographs of their own and other peoples’ hands. Some of these judgements involved explicit self-recognition: “Is this your hand or another person’s?” while others assessed self-recognition implicitly, comparing performance for self and other hands in tasks unrelated to self-other discrimination (e.g., left-versus-right; match-to-sample). We report five experiments with three groups of participants performing left-versus-right (Experiment 1) and self-versus-other discrimination tasks (Experiments 2 to 5). No evidence was found for better performance with self than with other stimuli, but some evidence was found for a self-disadvantage in the explicit task. Manipulating stimulus duration as a proxy for task difficulty revealed strong response biases in the explicit self-recognition task. Rather than discriminating between self and other stimuli, participants seem to treat self-other discrimination tasks as self-detection tasks, raising their criterion and consistently responding ‘not me’ when the task is difficult. A meta-analysis of 21 studies revealed no overall self-advantage, and suggested a publication bias for reports showing self-advantages in implicit tasks. Although this may appear counter-intuitive, we suggest that there may be no self-advantage in hand recognition.
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Khan HR, Turri J. Phenomenological Origins of Psychological Ownership. REVIEW OF GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 2022. [DOI: 10.1177/10892680221085506] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/17/2022]
Abstract
Motivated by a set of converging empirical findings and theoretical suggestions pertaining to the construct of ownership, we survey literature from multiple disciplines and present an extensive theoretical account linking the inception of a foundational naïve theory of ownership to principles governing the sense of (body) ownership. The first part of the account examines the emergence of the non-conceptual sense of ownership in terms of the minimal self and the body schema—a dynamic mental model of the body that functions as an instrument of directed action. A remarkable feature of the body schema is that it expands to incorporate objects that are objectively controlled by the person. Moreover, this embodiment of extracorporeal objects is accompanied by the phenomenological feeling of ownership towards the embodied objects. In fact, we argue that the sense of agency and ownership are inextricably linked, and that predictable control over an object can engender the sense of ownership. This relation between objective agency and the sense of ownership is moderated by gestalt-like principles. In the second part, we posit that these early emerging principles and experiences lead to the formation of a naïve theory of ownership rooted in notions of agential involvement.
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Affiliation(s)
- Haider Riaz Khan
- Department of Philosophy, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
| | - John Turri
- Philosophy Department and Cognitive Science Program, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
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Longo MR. Distortion of mental body representations. Trends Cogn Sci 2022; 26:241-254. [PMID: 34952785 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2021.11.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/06/2021] [Revised: 11/18/2021] [Accepted: 11/21/2021] [Indexed: 01/07/2023]
Abstract
Our body is central to our sense of self, and distorted body representations are found in several serious medical conditions. This paper reviews evidence that distortions of body representations are also common in healthy individuals, and occur in domains including tactile spatial perception, proprioception, and the conscious body image. Across domains, there is a general tendency for body width to be overestimated compared to body length. Intriguingly, distortions in both eating disorders and chronic pain appear to be exaggerations of this baseline pattern of distortions, suggesting that these conditions may relate to dysfunction of mechanisms for body perception. Distortions of body representations provide a revealing window into basic aspects of self-perception.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthew R Longo
- Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, UK.
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Parietal Gamma Band Oscillation Induced by Self-Hand Recognition. Brain Sci 2022; 12:brainsci12020272. [PMID: 35204035 PMCID: PMC8869977 DOI: 10.3390/brainsci12020272] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/21/2021] [Revised: 02/07/2022] [Accepted: 02/13/2022] [Indexed: 11/30/2022] Open
Abstract
Physiological studies have shown that self-body images receive unique recognition processing in a wide range of brain areas, from the frontal lobe to the parietal-occipital cortex. Event-related potential (ERP) studies have shown that the self-referential effect on the image of a hand increases P300 components, but such studies do not evaluate brain oscillatory activity. In this study, we aimed to discover the self-specific brain electrophysiological activity in relation to hand images. ERPs on the fronto-parietal midline were elicited by a three-stimulus visual oddball task using hand images: the self-hand, another hand (most similar to the self-hand), and another hand (similar to the self-hand). We analyzed ERP waveform and brain oscillatory activity by simple averaging and time-frequency analysis. The simple averaging analysis found no significant differences between the responses for the three stimulus tasks in all time windows. However, time-frequency analysis showed that self-hand stimuli elicited high gamma ERS in 650–900 ms at the Cz electrode compared to other hand stimuli. Our results show that brain activity specific to the self-referential process to the self-hand image was reflected in the long latency gamma band activity in the mid-central region. This high gamma-band activity at the Cz electrode may be similar to the activity of the mirror neuron system, which is involved in hand motion.
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Errante A, Rossi Sebastiano A, Ziccarelli S, Bruno V, Rozzi S, Pia L, Fogassi L, Garbarini F. Structural connectivity associated with the sense of body ownership: a diffusion tensor imaging and disconnection study in patients with bodily awareness disorder. Brain Commun 2022; 4:fcac032. [PMID: 35233523 PMCID: PMC8882004 DOI: 10.1093/braincomms/fcac032] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/06/2021] [Revised: 12/25/2021] [Accepted: 02/09/2022] [Indexed: 12/02/2022] Open
Abstract
The brain mechanisms underlying the emergence of a normal sense of body ownership can be investigated starting from pathological conditions in which body awareness is selectively impaired. Here, we focused on pathological embodiment, a body ownership disturbance observed in brain-damaged patients who misidentify other people’s limbs as their own. We investigated whether such body ownership disturbance can be classified as a disconnection syndrome, using three different approaches based on diffusion tensor imaging: (i) reconstruction of disconnectome maps in a large sample (N = 70) of stroke patients with and without pathological embodiment; (ii) probabilistic tractography, performed on the age-matched healthy controls (N = 16), to trace cortical connections potentially interrupted in patients with pathological embodiment and spared in patients without this pathological condition; (iii) probabilistic ‘in vivo’ tractography on two patients without and one patient with pathological embodiment. The converging results revealed the arcuate fasciculus and the third branch of the superior longitudinal fasciculus as mainly involved fibre tracts in patients showing pathological embodiment, suggesting that this condition could be related to the disconnection between frontal, parietal and temporal areas. This evidence raises the possibility of a ventral self-body recognition route including regions where visual (computed in occipito-temporal areas) and sensorimotor (stored in premotor and parietal areas) body representations are integrated, giving rise to a normal sense of body ownership.
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Affiliation(s)
- Antonino Errante
- Department of Medicine and Surgery, University of Parma, Parma, 43125, Italy
| | | | - Settimio Ziccarelli
- Department of Medicine and Surgery, University of Parma, Parma, 43125, Italy
| | - Valentina Bruno
- MANIBUS Lab, Psychology Department, University of Turin, Turin 10123, Italy
| | - Stefano Rozzi
- Department of Medicine and Surgery, University of Parma, Parma, 43125, Italy
| | - Lorenzo Pia
- SAMBA Research Group, Psychology Department, University of Turin, Turin 10123, Italy
- Neuroscience Institute of Turin (NIT), Turin 10123, Italy
| | - Leonardo Fogassi
- Department of Medicine and Surgery, University of Parma, Parma, 43125, Italy
| | - Francesca Garbarini
- MANIBUS Lab, Psychology Department, University of Turin, Turin 10123, Italy
- Neuroscience Institute of Turin (NIT), Turin 10123, Italy
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Abstract
OBJECTIVE Systematic studies about the impact of unilateral brain damage on the different body representations (body schema, body structural representation, and body semantics) are still rare. Aim of this study was to evaluate body representation deficits in a relatively large sample of patients with unilateral brain damage and to investigate the impact of right or left brain damage on body representations (BRs), independently from deficits in other cognitive processes. METHOD Sixty-four patients with unilateral stroke (22 with left brain damage, LBD; 31 with right brain damage without neglect, RBD-N; 11 with right brain damage with neglect, RBD+N) and 41 healthy individuals underwent a specific battery including BR as well as control tasks. RESULTS In more than a third of the sample, selective (37.5%) and pure (31%) deficits of BR were presented and equally distributed among the different BRs (˜10% for each representation), with selective (27.2%) and pure (22.7%) body schema deficit mainly presented after left brain damage. As a group, patients with unilateral brain damage, independently of the side of lesion (LBD, RBD-N, RBD+N), had significantly worse performance on body structural representation with respect to healthy individuals, whereas LBD had numerically worse performance on body schema with respect to healthy individuals and RBD-N. No significant differences among groups were found on body semantics. CONCLUSION BR deficits are not a rare consequence of unilateral brain damage and are independent of a more general cognitive dysfunction. Accordingly, the need for an accurate assessment and specific neuropsychological training in clinical settings is discussed.
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Strawson WH, Wang HT, Quadt L, Sherman M, Larsson DEO, Davies G, Mckeown BLA, Silva M, Fielding-Smith S, Jones AM, Hayward M, Smallwood J, Critchley HD, Garfinkel SN. Voice Hearing in Borderline Personality Disorder Across Perceptual, Subjective, and Neural Dimensions. Int J Neuropsychopharmacol 2021; 25:375-386. [PMID: 34940826 PMCID: PMC9154289 DOI: 10.1093/ijnp/pyab093] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/10/2021] [Revised: 11/24/2021] [Accepted: 12/23/2021] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) commonly occur in the context of borderline personality disorder (BPD) yet remain poorly understood. AVH are often perceived by patients with BPD as originating from inside the head and hence viewed clinically as "pseudohallucinations," but they nevertheless have a detrimental impact on well-being. METHODS The current study characterized perceptual, subjective, and neural expressions of AVH by using an auditory detection task, experience sampling and questionnaires, and functional neuroimaging, respectively. RESULTS Perceptually, reported AVH correlated with a bias for reporting the presence of a voice in white noise. Subjectively, questionnaire measures indicated that AVH were significantly distressing and persecutory. In addition, AVH intensity, but not perceived origin (i.e., inside vs outside the head), was associated with greater concurrent anxiety. Neurally, fMRI of BPD participants demonstrated that, relative to imagining or listening to voices, periods of reported AVH induced greater blood oxygenation level-dependent activity in anterior cingulate and bilateral temporal cortices (regional substrates for language processing). AVH symptom severity was associated with weaker functional connectivity between anterior cingulate and bilateral insular cortices. CONCLUSION In summary, our results indicate that AVH in participants with BPD are (1) underpinned by aberrant perceptual-cognitive mechanisms for signal detection, (2) experienced subjectively as persecutory and distressing, and (3) associated with distinct patterns of neural activity that inform proximal mechanistic understanding. Our findings are like analogous observations in patients with schizophrenia and validate the clinical significance of the AVH experience in BPD, often dismissed as "pseudohallucinations." These highlight a need to reconsider this experience as a treatment priority.
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Affiliation(s)
- Will H Strawson
- Correspondence: Will H. Strawson, MSci, Department of Neuroscience, Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS), University of Sussex, Falmer, BN1 9RY, UK ()
| | - Hao-Ting Wang
- Department of Neuroscience, Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS), University of Sussex, Falmer, UK,Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, Falmer, UK
| | - Lisa Quadt
- Department of Neuroscience, Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS), University of Sussex, Falmer, UK,Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, Falmer, UK
| | - Maxine Sherman
- Department of Neuroscience, Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS), University of Sussex, Falmer, UK,Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, Falmer, UK,Department of Informatics, University of Sussex, UK
| | - Dennis E O Larsson
- Department of Neuroscience, Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS), University of Sussex, Falmer, UK,Department of Psychology, Falmer, UK,Leverhulme Trust London, UK
| | - Geoff Davies
- Department of Neuroscience, Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS), University of Sussex, Falmer, UK,University of Sussex, Falmer, UK,Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Brighton, UK
| | | | - Marta Silva
- Cognition and Brain Plasticity Unit, Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain,Institute of Neurosciences, University of Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain
| | - Sarah Fielding-Smith
- University of Sussex, Falmer, UK,Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Brighton, UK,Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, Oxford, UK,Oxford Institute of Clinical Psychology Training and Research, Oxford, UK
| | - Anna-Marie Jones
- University of Sussex, Falmer, UK,Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Brighton, UK
| | - Mark Hayward
- Department of Psychology, Falmer, UK,University of Sussex, Falmer, UK,Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Brighton, UK
| | - Jonathan Smallwood
- Department of Psychology, University of York, York, UK,Department of Psychology, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada
| | - Hugo D Critchley
- Department of Neuroscience, Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS), University of Sussex, Falmer, UK,Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, Falmer, UK,University of Sussex, Falmer, UK,Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Brighton, UK
| | - Sarah N Garfinkel
- Department of Neuroscience, Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS), University of Sussex, Falmer, UK,University of Sussex, Falmer, UK,Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Brighton, UK,Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK
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34
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Where in the Brain is "the Other's" Hand? Mapping Dysfunctional Neural Networks in Somatoparaphrenia. Neuroscience 2021; 476:21-33. [PMID: 34537314 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2021.09.007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/17/2021] [Revised: 09/03/2021] [Accepted: 09/07/2021] [Indexed: 01/08/2023]
Abstract
Somatoparaphrenia refers to the delusional belief, typically observed in right brain-damaged patients, that the contralesional limbs belong to someone else. Here, we aimed to uncover the neural activity associated with this productive, i.e. confabulatory, component in a patient, S.P.P., with a large right-sided lesion of both cortical and subcortical gray and white matter. He claimed that his left paralyzed hand belonged to his mother. In a block-design functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) experiment, S.P.P. imagined that the mother would move her (i.e. his left) hand (condition "mother"). Subtraction of the activity elicited by control conditions (imagery of self-generated movement of either left or right hand) from that in the "mother" condition resulted in the focal activation of the pars opercularis of the right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG). In a separate, resting-state fMRI experiment with S.P.P. and 21 healthy controls, we examined the functional connectivity of the rIFG and the affected hand somatosensory network to the rest of the brain. We found a negative correlation between the activity in the rIFG and that of Broca area and the temporo-parietal junction in the left hemisphere. Furthermore, the affected hand somatosensory network was disconnected from the left secondary somatosensory cortex. Our results link the productive component of somatoparaphrenia to the activity of crucial hubs for integrating the multimodal signals of the affected hand. Furthermore, they provide the first direct evidence supporting the "left narrator model", proposed by Halligan et al. (1995), according to which the confabulations of somatoparaphrenia are due to a disconnection of left hemisphere language areas from right hemisphere parieto-temporal cortex.
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35
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Frigato G. The Neural Correlates of Access Consciousness and Phenomenal Consciousness Seem to Coincide and Would Correspond to a Memory Center, an Activation Center and Eight Parallel Convergence Centers. Front Psychol 2021; 12:749610. [PMID: 34659068 PMCID: PMC8511498 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.749610] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/29/2021] [Accepted: 09/01/2021] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
An increasing number of authors suggest that the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) have no selective, executive, or metacognitive function. It is believed that attention unconsciously selects the contents that will become conscious. Consciousness would have only the fundamental function of transforming the selected contents into a format easily used by high-level processors, such as working memory, language, or autobiographical memory. According to Dehaene, the neural correlates (NC) of access consciousness (AC; cognitive consciousness) constitute a widespread network in the frontal, parietal, and temporal cortices. While Tononi localized the correlates of phenomenal consciousness (PC; subjective consciousness) to a posterior “hot zone” in the temporo-parietal cortex. A careful examination of the works of these two groups leads to the conclusion that the correlates of access and PC coincide. The two consciousnesses are therefore two faces of the same single consciousness with both its cognitive and subjective contents. A review of the literature of the pathology called “neglect” confirms that the common correlates include 10: a memory center, an activation center, and eight parallel centers. From study of the “imagery” it can be deduced that these eight parallel centers would operate as points of convergence in the third person linking the respective eight sensory-motor-emotional areas activated by external perceptions and the corresponding memories of these perceptions deposited in the memory center. The first four centers of convergence appear in the most evolved fish and gradually reach eight in humans.
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36
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Brain Abnormalities in Individuals with a Desire for a Healthy Limb Amputation: Somatosensory, Motoric or Both? A Task-Based fMRI Verdict. Brain Sci 2021; 11:brainsci11091248. [PMID: 34573269 PMCID: PMC8468102 DOI: 10.3390/brainsci11091248] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/28/2021] [Revised: 09/16/2021] [Accepted: 09/17/2021] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Body integrity dysphoria (BID), a long-lasting desire for the amputation of physically healthy limbs, is associated with reduced fMRI resting-state functional connectivity of somatosensory cortices. Here, we used fMRI to evaluate whether these findings could be replicated and expanded using a task-based paradigm. We measured brain activations during somatosensory stimulation and motor tasks for each of the four limbs in ten individuals with a life-long desire for the amputation of the left leg and fourteen controls. For the left leg, BID individuals had reduced brain activation in the right superior parietal lobule for somatosensory stimulation and in the right paracentral lobule for the motor task, areas where we previously found reduced resting-state functional connectivity. In addition, for somatosensory stimulation only, we found a robust reduction in activation of somatosensory areas SII bilaterally, mostly regardless of the stimulated body part. Areas SII were regions of convergent activations for signals from all four limbs in controls to a significantly greater extent than in subjects with BID. We conclude that BID is associated with altered integration of somatosensory and, to a lesser extent, motor signals, involving limb-specific cortical maps and brain regions where the first integration of body-related signals is achieved through convergence.
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De Coster L, Sánchez-Herrero P, López-Moreno J, Tajadura-Jiménez A. The Perceived Match Between Observed and Own Bodies, but Not Its Accuracy, Is Influenced by Movement Dynamics and Clothing Cues. Front Hum Neurosci 2021; 15:701872. [PMID: 34393742 PMCID: PMC8355368 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2021.701872] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/28/2021] [Accepted: 07/07/2021] [Indexed: 12/02/2022] Open
Abstract
Own-perceived body matching - the ability to match one's own body with an observed body - is a difficult task for both general and clinical populations. Thus far, however, own-perceived body matching has been investigated in situations that are incongruent with how we are used to experience and perceive our body in daily life. In the current study, we aimed to examine own-perceived body matching in a context that more closely resembles real life. More specifically, we investigated the effects of body movement dynamics and clothing cues on own-perceived body matching. We asked participants to match their own body with an externally perceived body that was a 3D-generated avatar based on participants' real bodies, fitted with a computer-generated dress. This perceived body was (1) either static (non-walking avatar) or dynamic (walking avatar), (2) either bigger, smaller, or the same size as participants' own body size, and (3) fitted with a dress with a size either bigger, smaller, or the same as participants' own dress size. Our results suggest that movement dynamics cues did not improve the accuracy of own-perceived body matching, but that confidence about dress fit was higher for dynamic avatars, and that the difference between dynamic and static avatars was dependent on participants' self-esteem. Furthermore, when participants were asked to rate the observed body in reference to how they wanted to represent themselves to others, dynamic avatars were rated lower than static avatars for the biggest-sized bodies only, possibly reflecting the influence of movement cues on amplifying socio-cultural stereotypes. Finally, while smaller body/dress sizes were systematically rated higher than bigger body/dress sizes for several self-report items, the interplay between body and dress size played an important role in participants' self-report as well. Thus, while our research suggests that movement and garment dynamics, allowing for realistic, concrete situations that are reminiscent of daily life, influence own-body perception, these cues did not lead to an improvement in accuracy. These findings provide important insights for research exploring (own-) body perception and bodily self-awareness, with practical (e.g., development of online avatars) and clinical (e.g., anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphic disorder) implications.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lize De Coster
- DEI Interactive Systems Group, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
| | | | - Jorge López-Moreno
- Seddi Labs, Madrid, Spain
- Multimodal Simulation Lab, Department of Computer Science and Architecture, Computer Systems and Languages, Statistics and Operative Investigation, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain
| | - Ana Tajadura-Jiménez
- DEI Interactive Systems Group, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
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Mello M, Fusaro M, Tieri G, Aglioti SM. Wearing same- and opposite-sex virtual bodies and seeing them caressed in intimate areas. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2021; 75:461-474. [PMID: 34169751 DOI: 10.1177/17470218211031557] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/24/2023]
Abstract
Immersive virtual reality enables people to undergo the experience of owning an artificial body and vicariously feeling tactile stimuli delivered to it. However, it is currently unknown how such experiences are modified by the sexual congruency between the human and the artificial agent. In two studies, heterosexual men (Experiment 1) and women (Experiment 2) embodied same-sex and opposite-sex avatars and were asked to evaluate the experience (e.g., pleasantness, erogeneity) of being touched on social or intimate areas of their virtual body by a male or female avatar. Electrocardiogram and galvanic skin response were also recorded. Moreover, participants' implicit and explicit gender biases were examined via a gender-potency implicit association test and the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory. When embodying a same-sex avatar, men and women rated caresses on intimate areas from an avatar of the opposite sex as more pleasant and erogenous. Conversely, body swap-that is, wearing an opposite-sex avatar-enhanced participants' perceptions of pleasantness and erogeneity for caresses on intimate areas from a same-sex toucher. This effect was stronger in men than in women. Furthermore, physiological correlates of enhanced processing of arousing stimuli predicted behavioural outcomes during the body swap illusion. Wearing an opposite-sex avatar affects one's own body representations and may have important implications on people's attitudes and implicit reactivity to touch-mediated interactions. Men seem more susceptible to this type of body swap illusion. Our paradigm may induce profound changes of cross-sex perspective-taking and provide novel tools for promoting empathy and comprehension of sex-related diversity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Manuel Mello
- SCNLab, Fondazione Santa Lucia, IRCCS, Rome, Italy.,Sapienza, Università degli Studi di Roma & Center for Life Nano- and Neuro-Science, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Rome, Italy
| | - Martina Fusaro
- SCNLab, Fondazione Santa Lucia, IRCCS, Rome, Italy.,Sapienza, Università degli Studi di Roma & Center for Life Nano- and Neuro-Science, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Rome, Italy
| | - Gaetano Tieri
- SCNLab, Fondazione Santa Lucia, IRCCS, Rome, Italy.,Virtual Reality Lab, University of Rome Unitelma Sapienza, Rome, Italy
| | - Salvatore Maria Aglioti
- SCNLab, Fondazione Santa Lucia, IRCCS, Rome, Italy.,Sapienza, Università degli Studi di Roma & Center for Life Nano- and Neuro-Science, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Rome, Italy
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39
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Shibuya S, Unenaka S, Shimada S, Ohki Y. Distinct modulation of mu and beta rhythm desynchronization during observation of embodied fake hand rotation. Neuropsychologia 2021; 159:107952. [PMID: 34252417 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107952] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/19/2021] [Revised: 06/16/2021] [Accepted: 07/06/2021] [Indexed: 12/17/2022]
Abstract
The rubber hand illusion (RHI) is a phenomenon whereby participants recognize a fake hand as their own. Studies have examined the effects of observing fake hand movements after the RHI on brain sensorimotor activity, although results remain controversial. To address these discrepancies, we investigated the effects of observation of fake hand rotation after the RHI on sensorimotor mu (μ: 8-13 Hz) and beta (β: 15-25 Hz) rhythm event-related desynchronization (ERD) using electroencephalography (EEG). Questionnaire results and proprioceptive drift revealed that the RHI occurred in participants when their invisible hand and fake visible hand were stroked synchronously but not during asynchronous stroking. Independent component (IC) clustering from EEG data during movement observation identified three IC clusters, including the right sensorimotor, left sensorimotor, and left occipital cluster. In the right sensorimotor cluster, we observed distinct modulation of μ and β ERD during fake hand rotation. Illusory ownership over the fake hand enhanced μ ERD but inversely attenuated β ERD. Further, the extent of μ ERD correlated with proprioceptive drift, but not with questionnaire ratings, whereas the converse results were obtained for β ERD. No ownership-dependent ERD modulation was detected in the left sensorimotor cluster. Alpha (α: 8-13 Hz) rhythm ERD of the left occipital cluster was smaller in the synchronous condition than in the asynchronous condition, but α ERD was not correlated with questionnaire rating or drift. These findings suggest that observing embodied fake hand rotation induces distinct cortical processing in sensorimotor brain areas.
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Affiliation(s)
- Satoshi Shibuya
- Department of Integrative Physiology, Kyorin University School of Medicine, 6-20-2 Shinkawa, Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan.
| | - Satoshi Unenaka
- Department of Sport Education, School of Lifelong Sport, Hokusho University, 23 Bunkyodai, Ebetsu, Hokkaido, Japan
| | - Sotaro Shimada
- Department of Electronics and Bioinformatics, School of Science and Technology, Meiji University, 1-1-1 Higashi-Mita, Tama-ku, Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Japan
| | - Yukari Ohki
- Department of Integrative Physiology, Kyorin University School of Medicine, 6-20-2 Shinkawa, Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan
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40
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Crivelli D, Peviani V, Salvato G, Bottini G. Exploring the Interaction Between Handedness and Body Parts Ownership by Means of the Implicit Association Test. Front Hum Neurosci 2021; 15:681904. [PMID: 34305551 PMCID: PMC8292743 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2021.681904] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/17/2021] [Accepted: 06/14/2021] [Indexed: 11/26/2022] Open
Abstract
The experience of owning a body is built upon the integration of exteroceptive, interoceptive, and proprioceptive signals. Recently, it has been suggested that motor signals could be particularly important in producing the feeling of body part ownership. One thus may hypothesize that the strength of this feeling may not be spatially uniform; rather, it could vary as a function of the degree by which different body parts are involved in motor behavior. Given that our dominant hand plays a leading role in our motor behavior, we hypothesized that it could be more strongly associated with one’s self compared to its non-dominant counterpart. To explore whether this possible asymmetry manifests as a stronger implicit association of the right hand (vs left hand) with the self, we administered the Implicit Association Test to a group of 70 healthy individuals. To control whether this asymmetric association is human-body specific, we further tested whether a similar asymmetry characterizes the association between a right (vs left) animal body part with the concept of self, in an independent sample of subjects (N = 70, 140 subjects total). Our results revealed a linear relationship between the magnitude of the implicit association between the right hand with the self and the subject’s handedness. In detail, the strength of this association increased as a function of hand preference. Critically, the handedness score did not predict the association of the right-animal body part with the self. These findings suggest that, in healthy individuals, the dominant and non-dominant hands are differently perceived at an implicit level as belonging to the self. We argue that such asymmetry may stem from the different roles that the two hands play in our adaptive motor behavior.
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Affiliation(s)
- Damiano Crivelli
- Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy.,NeuroMi, Milan Centre for Neuroscience, Milan, Italy
| | - Valeria Peviani
- Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy.,Department of Neuroscience, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
| | - Gerardo Salvato
- Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy.,NeuroMi, Milan Centre for Neuroscience, Milan, Italy.,Cognitive Neuropsychology Centre, ASST Grande Ospedale Metropolitano Niguarda, Milan, Italy
| | - Gabriella Bottini
- Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy.,NeuroMi, Milan Centre for Neuroscience, Milan, Italy.,Cognitive Neuropsychology Centre, ASST Grande Ospedale Metropolitano Niguarda, Milan, Italy
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41
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Wang L, Ma L, Yang J, Wu J. Human Somatosensory Processing and Artificial Somatosensation. CYBORG AND BIONIC SYSTEMS 2021; 2021:9843259. [PMID: 36285142 PMCID: PMC9494715 DOI: 10.34133/2021/9843259] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/19/2021] [Accepted: 04/30/2021] [Indexed: 11/06/2022] Open
Abstract
In the past few years, we have gained a better understanding of the information processing mechanism in the human brain, which has led to advances in artificial intelligence and humanoid robots. However, among the various sensory systems, studying the somatosensory system presents the greatest challenge. Here, we provide a comprehensive review of the human somatosensory system and its corresponding applications in artificial systems. Due to the uniqueness of the human hand in integrating receptor and actuator functions, we focused on the role of the somatosensory system in object recognition and action guidance. First, the low-threshold mechanoreceptors in the human skin and somatotopic organization principles along the ascending pathway, which are fundamental to artificial skin, were summarized. Second, we discuss high-level brain areas, which interacted with each other in the haptic object recognition. Based on this close-loop route, we used prosthetic upper limbs as an example to highlight the importance of somatosensory information. Finally, we present prospective research directions for human haptic perception, which could guide the development of artificial somatosensory systems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Luyao Wang
- Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Intelligent Robots and Systems, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China
- School of Mechatronical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China
| | - Lihua Ma
- Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Intelligent Robots and Systems, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China
- School of Mechatronical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China
| | - Jiajia Yang
- Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in Health Systems, Okayama University, Okayama, Japan
| | - Jinglong Wu
- Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Intelligent Robots and Systems, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China
- School of Mechatronical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China
- Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in Health Systems, Okayama University, Okayama, Japan
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42
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Hara M, Kanayama N, Blanke O, Salomon R. Modulation of Bodily Self-Consciousness by Self and External Touch. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON HAPTICS 2021; 14:615-625. [PMID: 33750715 DOI: 10.1109/toh.2021.3067651] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
The full body illusion (FBI) is a bodily illusion based on the application of multisensory conflicts that induce changes in bodily self-consciousness (BSC). This has been used to study cognitive brain mechanisms underlying body ownership and related aspects of self-consciousness. Typically, such paradigms employ external passive multisensory stimulation, thus neglecting the possible contributions of self-generated action and haptic cues to body ownership. In this article, the effects of both external and voluntary self-touch on BSC were examined with a robotics-based FBI paradigm. We compared the effects of classical passive visuotactile stimulation and active self-touch (in which experimental participants had a sense of agency over the tactile stimulation) on the FBI. We evaluated these effects using a questionnaire, crossmodal congruency task, and measurements of changes in self-location. The results indicated that both synchronous passive visuotactile stimulation and synchronous active self-touch induced illusory ownership over a virtual body, without significant differences in their magnitudes. However, the FBI induced by active self-touch was associated with a larger drift in self-location towards the virtual body. These results show that movement-related signals arising from self-touch impact the BSC not only for hand ownership but also for torso-centered body ownership and related aspects of BSC.
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43
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Ionta S. Visual Neuropsychology in Development: Anatomo-Functional Brain Mechanisms of Action/Perception Binding in Health and Disease. Front Hum Neurosci 2021; 15:689912. [PMID: 34135745 PMCID: PMC8203289 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2021.689912] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/01/2021] [Accepted: 05/06/2021] [Indexed: 12/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Vision is the main entrance for environmental input to the human brain. Even if vision is our most used sensory modality, its importance is not limited to environmental exploration. Rather it has strong links to motor competences, further extending to cognitive and social aspects of human life. These multifaceted relationships are particularly important in developmental age and become dramatically evident in presence of complex deficits originating from visual aberrancies. The present review summarizes the available neuropsychological evidence on the development of visual competences, with a particular focus on the associated visuo-motor integration skills in health and disease. With the aim of supporting future research and interventional settings, the goal of the present review is to constitute a solid base to help the translation of neuropsychological hypotheses into straightforward empirical investigations and rehabilitation/training protocols. This approach will further increase the impact, ameliorate the acceptance, and ease the use and implementation of lab-derived intervention protocols in real-life situations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Silvio Ionta
- Sensory-Motor Lab (SeMoLa), Department of Ophthalmology-University of Lausanne, Jules Gonin Eye Hospital-Fondation Asile des Aveugles, Lausanne, Switzerland
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44
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Experiential ownership and body ownership are different phenomena. Sci Rep 2021; 11:10602. [PMID: 34012048 PMCID: PMC8134432 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-90014-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/03/2020] [Accepted: 05/05/2021] [Indexed: 02/03/2023] Open
Abstract
Body ownership concerns what it is like to feel a body part or a full body as mine, and has become a prominent area of study. We propose that there is a closely related type of bodily self-consciousness largely neglected by researchers-experiential ownership. It refers to the sense that I am the one who is having a conscious experience. Are body ownership and experiential ownership actually the same phenomenon or are they genuinely different? In our experiments, the participant watched a rubber hand or someone else's body from the first-person perspective and was touched either synchronously or asynchronously. The main findings: (1) The sense of body ownership was hindered in the asynchronous conditions of both the body-part and the full-body experiments. However, a strong sense of experiential ownership was observed in those conditions. (2) We found the opposite when the participants' responses were measured after tactile stimulations had ceased for 5 s. In the synchronous conditions of another set of body-part and full-body experiments, only experiential ownership was blocked but not body ownership. These results demonstrate for the first time the double dissociation between body ownership and experiential ownership. Experiential ownership is indeed a distinct type of bodily self-consciousness.
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45
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Roel Lesur M, Weijs ML, Nguyen TD, Lenggenhager B. Staying in touch with our bodies: Stronger sense of ownership during self- compared to other touch despite temporal mismatches. Cognition 2021; 214:104769. [PMID: 34015545 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104769] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/24/2020] [Revised: 05/06/2021] [Accepted: 05/07/2021] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
Abstract
Self-touch is considered important for bodily self-consciousness and self-other distinction and has been reported to improve clinical symptoms of disembodiment. To investigate the link between self-touch and disembodiment in healthy participants, we studied the effect of self-touch versus touch produced by another person (other-touch) on experimentally induced disembodiment. In a mixed reality paradigm, across two experiments, participants could see their own body and surroundings with a controllable visual delay and either stroked their own hand with a paintbrush or were stroked with it by the experimenter. Experiment 1 first assessed the sensitivity to temporal multimodal mismatches and delay-induced changes in the sense of body ownership in three conditions, namely self-touch, other-touch and hidden-self-touch (visually occluding the touching hand). In a second block, we compared phenomenological and physiological (threat response) measures of disembodiment between the self-touch and other-touch conditions. Experiment 2 roughly replicated the first block of Experiment 1 but included a condition in which participants performed the self-touch gesture without touching their hand. Such experiment attempted to control for the potential role of efferent signals. Our results show that increasing visual delay generally enhances the feeling of disembodiment, yet the decrease of body ownership is less pronounced during self-touch. For sensitivity to delay between conditions, however, diverging findings are discussed. This study provides evidence for the importance of self-touch in sustaining a healthy sense of body in the context of disembodiment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marte Roel Lesur
- Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
| | | | - Thi Dao Nguyen
- Newborn Research, Department of Neonatology, University Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
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46
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Moayedi M, Noroozbahari N, Hadjis G, Themelis K, Salomons TV, Newport R, S. Lewis J. The structural and functional connectivity neural underpinnings of body image. Hum Brain Mapp 2021; 42:3608-3619. [PMID: 33960581 PMCID: PMC8249883 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.25457] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/13/2020] [Revised: 04/09/2021] [Accepted: 04/12/2021] [Indexed: 12/14/2022] Open
Abstract
How we perceive our bodies is fundamental to our self-consciousness and our experience in the world. There are two types of interrelated internal body representations-a subjective experience of the position of a limb in space (body schema) and the subjective experience of the shape and size of the limb (body image). Body schema has been extensively studied, but there is no evidence of the brain structure and network dynamics underpinning body image. Here, we provide the first evidence for the extrastriate body area (EBA), a multisensory brain area, as the structural and functional neural substrate for body shape and size. We performed a multisensory finger-stretch illusion that elongated the index finger. EBA volume and functional connectivity to the posterior parietal cortex are both related to the participants' susceptibility to the illusion. Taken together, these data suggest that EBA structure and connectivity encode body representation and body perception disturbances.
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Affiliation(s)
- Massieh Moayedi
- Centre for Multimodal Sensorimotor and Pain Research, Faculty of DentistryUniversity of TorontoTorontoOntarioCanada
| | - Nasim Noroozbahari
- Centre for Multimodal Sensorimotor and Pain Research, Faculty of DentistryUniversity of TorontoTorontoOntarioCanada
| | - Georgia Hadjis
- Centre for Multimodal Sensorimotor and Pain Research, Faculty of DentistryUniversity of TorontoTorontoOntarioCanada
| | - Kristy Themelis
- School of PsychologyUniversity of NottinghamNottinghamUK,Department of PsychologyUniversity of WarwickCoventryUK
| | - Tim V. Salomons
- School of Psychology and Clinical Language SciencesUniversity of ReadingReadingUK,Department of PsychologyQueen's University, KingstonOntarioCanada
| | - Roger Newport
- School of PsychologyUniversity of NottinghamNottinghamUK,School of Sport, Exercise and Health SciencesLoughborough UniversityLoughboroughUK
| | - Jennifer S. Lewis
- CRPS/CCLER Service, Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS TrustBath,School of Health and Social Wellbeing, Faculty of Health and Applied SciencesGlenside Campus, University of the West of EnglandBristol
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47
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Differential effects of minified and magnified mirror visual feedback on the underlying misperception of hand size. Atten Percept Psychophys 2021; 83:2281-2290. [PMID: 33754299 PMCID: PMC8213598 DOI: 10.3758/s13414-021-02262-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 01/25/2021] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Perception of the size of body parts, for instance the hand, has been shown to be distorted in healthy participants, with over- and underestimations of width and length, respectively. Illusory manipulations of body shape and size have highlighted the flexibility of the body representation and have also been found to update immediate perceptions of body size and surrounding objects. Here, we examined whether underlying misperceptions of hand width and length can be modified through exposure to illusory changes in hand size using a mirror visual feedback (MVF) paradigm. While questionnaire responses indicated subjective susceptibility to both magnified and minified manipulations, objective hand size estimates only showed significant differences following exposure to minifying mirrors. These variations might reflect differences in the way that stored representations are accessed or updated in response to size manipulations. Secondly, the findings further reinforce differences between subjective and objective outcomes of illusions on subsequent body perception.
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48
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Lahiri D, Cappa SF. Considerations on "mirror agnosia". Cortex 2021; 137:251-254. [PMID: 33647850 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2021.01.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/25/2020] [Revised: 10/14/2020] [Accepted: 01/18/2021] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Durjoy Lahiri
- Bangur Institute of Neurosciences, Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research, SSKM Hospital, Kolkata, India
| | - Stefano F Cappa
- University School for Advanced Studies (IUSS-Pavia), Pavia, Italy; IRCCS Mondino Foundation, Pavia, Italy.
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49
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Cardinali L, Zanini A, Yanofsky R, Roy AC, de Vignemont F, Culham JC, Farnè A. The toolish hand illusion: embodiment of a tool based on similarity with the hand. Sci Rep 2021; 11:2024. [PMID: 33479395 PMCID: PMC7820319 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-81706-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/19/2016] [Accepted: 01/04/2021] [Indexed: 01/07/2023] Open
Abstract
A tool can function as a body part yet not feel like one: Putting down a fork after dinner does not feel like losing a hand. However, studies show fake body-parts are embodied and experienced as parts of oneself. Typically, embodiment illusions have only been reported when the fake body-part visually resembles the real one. Here we reveal that participants can experience an illusion that a mechanical grabber, which looks scarcely like a hand, is part of their body. We found changes in three signatures of embodiment: the real hand’s perceived location, the feeling that the grabber belonged to the body, and autonomic responses to visible threats to the grabber. These findings show that artificial objects can become embodied even though they bear little visual resemblance to the hand.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lucilla Cardinali
- Cognition, Motion and Neuroscience Lab, Istituto Italiano Di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy.
| | - Alessandro Zanini
- Integrative Multisensory Perception Action and Cognition Team - ImpAct, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, INSERM U1028, CNRS U5292, Lyon, France.,University UCBL Lyon 1, University of Lyon, Lyon, France
| | - Russell Yanofsky
- Cognition, Motion and Neuroscience Lab, Istituto Italiano Di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy
| | - Alice C Roy
- Dynamique Du LangageUMR 5596Institut Des Sciences de L'Homme, CNRS- Lyon University, Lyon, France.,University of Lyon II, Lyon, France
| | | | - Jody C Culham
- Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada
| | - Alessandro Farnè
- Integrative Multisensory Perception Action and Cognition Team - ImpAct, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, INSERM U1028, CNRS U5292, Lyon, France.,University UCBL Lyon 1, University of Lyon, Lyon, France.,Neuro-Immersion - Mouvement et Handicap, Hospices Civils de Lyon, Lyon, France.,Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMeC), University of Trento, Trento, Italy
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50
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Saetta G, Zindel-Geisseler O, Stauffacher F, Serra C, Vannuscorps G, Brugger P. Asomatognosia: Structured Interview and Assessment of Visuomotor Imagery. Front Psychol 2021; 11:544544. [PMID: 33519574 PMCID: PMC7840572 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.544544] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/21/2020] [Accepted: 12/04/2020] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Asomatognosia designates the experience that one's body has faded from awareness. It is typically a somaesthetic experience but may target the visual modality ("asomatoscopy"). Frequently associated symptoms are the loss of ownership or agency over a limb. Here, we elaborate on the rigorous nosographic classification of asomatognosia and introduce a structured interview to capture both its core symptoms and associated signs of bodily estrangement. We additionally report the case of a pure left-sided hemiasomatognosia occurring after surgical removal of a meningioma in the right atrium. Despite the wide lesions of the right angular gyrus and of the temporo-parietal junction, the patient did not present visuospatial deficits or bodily awareness disorders other than hemiasomatognosia. The patient and 10 matched controls' motor imagery was formally assessed with a limb laterality task in which they had to decide whether hands and feet presented under different angles of rotation depicted a left or a right limb. Bayesian statistics showed that patient's reaction times were significantly impaired exclusively for the left foot and especially for mental rotations requiring somatomotor rather than visual limb representations. This was in accordance with a more enduring left-sided hemiasomatognosia for the lower limbs confined to the somesthetic modality. Our findings shed new light on motor imagery in asomatognosia and encourage the future use of the structured interview introduced here. In addition, the limb laterality task may capture phenomenological elements of a case by chronometric means. This allows a more standardized reporting of phenomenological detail and improves communication across different clinical facilities.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gianluca Saetta
- Neuropsychology Unit, University Hospital Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Psychiatric University Clinic Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
| | | | | | - Carlo Serra
- Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Gilles Vannuscorps
- Institute of Psychological Sciences and Institute of Neuroscience, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
| | - Peter Brugger
- Psychiatric University Clinic Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Neuropsychology Unit, Rehabilitation Centre Valens, Valens, Switzerland
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