Repository logo

Infoscience

  • English
  • French
Log In
Logo EPFL, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne

Infoscience

  • English
  • French
Log In
  1. Home
  2. Academic and Research Output
  3. Journal articles
  4. You or me? Disentangling perspectival, perceptual, and integrative mechanisms in heterotopagnosia
 
research article

You or me? Disentangling perspectival, perceptual, and integrative mechanisms in heterotopagnosia

Bassolino, Michela  
•
Bouzerda-Wahlen, Aurelie
•
Moix, Viviane
Show more
November 1, 2019
Cortex

Heterotopagnosia-without-Autotopagnosia (HwA) is characterized by the incapacity to point to body parts on others, but not on one's own body. This has been classically interpreted as related to a self-other distinction, with impaired visual representations of other bodies seen in third person perspective (3PP), besides spared own body somatosensory representations in 1PP. However, HwA could be impacted by a deficit in the integration of visual and somatosensory information in space, that are spatially congruent in the case of one's own body, but not for others' body. Here, we test this hypothesis in a rare neurological patient with HwA, H+, as well as in a control patient with a comparable neuropsychological profile, but without HwA, and in age-matched healthy controls, in two experiments. First, we assessed body part recognition in a new task where somatosensory information from the participant's body and visual information from the target body shown in virtual reality was never aligned in space. Results show that, differently from the flawless performance in controls, H+ committed errors for not only the body of others in 3PP, but for all conditions where the information related to the real and the target body was not spatially congruent. Then, we tested whether the integration between these multisensory bodily cues in space, as during visuo-tactile stimulation in the full-body illusion, improves the patient's performance. Data show that after the stimulation prompting visuo-tactile integration, but not in control conditions, the patient's abilities to process body parts improved up to normal level, thus confirming and extending the first findings. Altogether, these results support a new interpretation of HwA as linked to the matching between somatosensory inputs from one's body and visual information from a body seen at a distance, and encourage the application of multisensory stimulation and virtual reality for the treatment of body-related disorders.

  • Details
  • Metrics
Type
research article
DOI
10.1016/j.cortex.2019.05.017
Web of Science ID

WOS:000493898600016

Author(s)
Bassolino, Michela  
Bouzerda-Wahlen, Aurelie
Moix, Viviane
Bellmann, Anne
Herbelin, Bruno  
Serino, Andrea  
Blanke, Olaf  
Date Issued

2019-11-01

Published in
Cortex
Volume

120

Start page

212

End page

222

Subjects

Behavioral Sciences

•

Neurosciences

•

Psychology, Experimental

•

Neurosciences & Neurology

•

Psychology

•

heterotopagnosia

•

virtual reality

•

stroke

•

body recognition

•

self-other distinction

•

body-related disorders

•

body parts

•

self-location

•

brain

•

ownership

•

touch

•

hand

•

somatoparaphrenia

•

representations

•

recognition

•

embodiment

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LNCO  
CNP  
Available on Infoscience
November 20, 2019
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/163247
Logo EPFL, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
  • Contact
  • infoscience@epfl.ch

  • Follow us on Facebook
  • Follow us on Instagram
  • Follow us on LinkedIn
  • Follow us on X
  • Follow us on Youtube
AccessibilityLegal noticePrivacy policyCookie settingsEnd User AgreementGet helpFeedback

Infoscience is a service managed and provided by the Library and IT Services of EPFL. © EPFL, tous droits réservés