Elsevier

Neuropsychologia

Volume 48, Issue 3, February 2010, Pages 645-654
Neuropsychologia

From maps to form to space: Touch and the body schema

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.08.017Get rights and content

Abstract

Evidence from patients has shown that primary somatosensory representations are plastic, dynamically changing in response to central or peripheral alterations, as well as experience. Furthermore, recent research has also demonstrated that altering body posture results in changes in the perceived sensation and localization of tactile stimuli. Using evidence from behavioral studies with brain-damaged and healthy subjects, as well as functional imaging, we propose that the traditional concept of the body schema should be divided into three components. First are primary somatosensory representations, which are representations of the skin surface that are typically somatotopically organized, and have been shown to change dynamically due to peripheral (usage, amputation, deafferentation) or central (lesion) modifications. Second, we argue for a mapping from a primary somatosensory representation to a secondary representation of body size and shape (body form representation). Finally, we review evidence for a third set of representations that encodes limb position and is used to represent the location of tactile stimuli relative to the subject using external, non-somatotopic reference frames (postural representations).

Section snippets

From maps to skin to space—touch and body representations

Information regarding body position in space comes from tactile, proprioceptive, visual, vestibular, auditory and enteroceptive sources. These inputs are integrated to generate representations of the body that are crucial for perception and action. Head and Holmes (1911) introduced the concept of multiple integrated body representations, dividing them into three categories—a postural schema that represents the position of the body in space before and after movement, a superficial schema used to

From maps to form—primary somatosensory and body form representations

The original mapping studies by Penfield and colleagues (Penfield and Boldrey, 1937, Penfield and Rasmussen, 1950) recording responses after electrical stimulation of primary somatosensory cortex offered two major insights. First, this research demonstrated that representations of the skin surface have a generally somatotopic organization, such that, for example, the hand representation is next to the arm representation. Second, they found that cortical representations of body parts are larger

From Form to space—touch and postural representations

In the previous section, we discussed the relationship between primary somatosensory representations and body form representations in leading to a percept of tactile stimulation on the skin surface. However, localizing relative to the skin surface is not sufficient. One must also know the location of one's body in order to localize tactile stimuli relative to objects in the environment and external space. One case study provides evidence for a dissociation between representations for localizing

Conclusions

Representing the location of tactile stimuli in space requires that multiple complementary types of information be integrated. In this paper, we propose a preliminary model in which the traditional body schema is partitioned into three distinct but interactive representations. First, we suggest that primary somatosensory representations provide a depiction of the nature of stimuli on the body surface; this representation is altered by use as well as peripheral and central nervous system

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