RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Testing the exteroceptive function of nociception: the role of visual experience in shaping the spatial representations of nociceptive inputs
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 536367
DO 10.1101/536367
A1 Vanderclausen, Camille
A1 Bourgois, Marion
A1 Volder, Anne De
A1 Legrain, Valéry
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/01/31/536367.abstract
AB Adequately localizing pain is crucial to protect the body against physical damage and react to the stimulus in external space having caused such damage. Accordingly, it is hypothesized that nociceptive inputs are remapped from a somatotopic reference frame, representing the skin surface, towards a spatiotopic frame, representing the body parts in external space. This ability is thought to be developed and shaped by early visual experience. To test this hypothesis, normally sighted and early blind participants performed temporal order judgment tasks during which they judged which of two nociceptive stimuli applied on each hand’s dorsum was perceived as first delivered. Crucially, tasks were performed with the hands either in an uncrossed posture or crossed over body midline. While early blinds were not affected by the posture, performances of the normally sighted participants decreased in the crossed condition relative to the uncrossed condition. This indicates that nociceptive stimuli were automatically remapped into a spatiotopic representation that interfered with somatotopy in normally sighted individuals, whereas early blinds seemed to mostly rely on a somatotopic representation to localize nociceptive inputs. Accordingly, the plasticity of the nociceptive system would not purely depend on bodily experiences but also on crossmodal interactions between nociception and vision during early sensory experience.List of abbreviationsJNDjust noticeable differenceSOAstimulus onset asynchronyPSSpoint of subjective simultaneityTOJtemporal order judgement task