Body Context and Posture Affect Mental Imagery of Hands

Ionta, Silvio; Perruchoud, David; Draganski, Bogdan; Blanke, Olaf

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0034382

Cited by 57 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 70 publications

(127 reference statements)

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“…2). Thus, in line with previous evidence, the mental rotation function (non-monotonical increase of RTs as a function of stimulus orientation) was more pronounced for hands than full-bodies11. Further behavioral effects generally confirmed previous work and are reported in detail as Supplementary Material (results).…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 91%

“…In accordance with previous studies11, RTs were analyzed by means of a 3-way repeated measures ANOVA with stimulus (hands, full-bodies), laterality (left, right), and orientation (0°, 90°, 180°, and 270°) as main factors. The 2-way interaction between stimulus and orientation was significant [F(3,45) = 11.8; p < 0.05].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…When hand images are mentally rotated, the performance strongly depends on image orientation (RTs linearly increase from 0° to 180° rotation and vice versa until 360°)8 and is influenced by actual proprioceptive input9. Conversely, mental rotation of full-bodies is less dependent on orientation10 and proprioception11. In addition, the absence of proprioceptive input (as after complete spinal cord injury) affects the interplay between visual and sensorimotor components in the representation of the disconnected body parts (feet, in the case of complete spinal cord injury)12.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Differential neural encoding of sensorimotor and visual body representations

Perruchoud

Michels

Piccirelli

et al. 2016

Sci Rep

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Sensorimotor processing specifically impacts mental body representations. In particular, deteriorated somatosensory input (as after complete spinal cord injury) increases the relative weight of visual aspects of body parts’ representations, leading to aberrancies in how images of body parts are mentally manipulated (e.g. mental rotation). This suggests that a sensorimotor or visual reference frame, respectively, can be relatively dominant in local (hands) versus global (full-body) bodily representations. On this basis, we hypothesized that the recruitment of a specific reference frame could be reflected in the activation of sensorimotor versus visual brain networks. To this aim, we directly compared the brain activity associated with mental rotation of hands versus full-bodies. Mental rotation of hands recruited more strongly the supplementary motor area, premotor cortex, and secondary somatosensory cortex. Conversely, mental rotation of full-bodies determined stronger activity in temporo-occipital regions, including the functionally-localized extrastriate body area. These results support that (1) sensorimotor and visual frames of reference are used to represent the body, (2) two distinct brain networks encode local or global bodily representations, and (3) the extrastriate body area is a multimodal region involved in body processing both at the perceptual and representational level.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 97%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Differential neural encoding of sensorimotor and visual body representations

Perruchoud

Michels

Piccirelli

et al. 2016

Sci Rep

Self Cite

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“…2) consisted of naturalistic pictures of the hands, presented one at a time on the vertical TV screen, that had been selected from previous studies (e.g., Ionta, Perruchoud, Draganski, & Blanke, 2012). The left hands were mirror images of the right ones.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anatomically plausible illusory posture affects mental rotation of body parts

Ionta

Sforza

Funato

et al. 2012

Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci

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During mental rotation (MR) of body parts, people internally simulate the movement of their corresponding body segments. These sensory-motor mechanisms render MR sensitive to proprioceptive information (e.g., posture). Similar mechanisms can alter illusory hand ownership following synchronous visuotactile stimulation (e.g., the rubber hand illusion [RHI]). In the present study, we first showed that illusory ownership for a fake hand can also be induced when the posture of the fake hand (palm-up) does not correspond with the subject's physical hand posture (palm-down). Then we tested whether illusory ownership for a fake hand in such a posture impacts the MR of hands carried out immediately and repeatedly after the RHI. The results showed that MR was altered for the view corresponding to the fake hand's posture, but not for other views. Additionally, these effects depended on illusory ownership, as only synchronous visuotactile stimulation was found to lead to these changes, characterized by a modulation of the rotation-dependent profile of MR response times. These findings show that similar sensory-motor mechanisms are recruited during the MR of hands and illusory hand ownership manipulated through multisensory mismatch, and that bottom-up visuotactile stimulation interferes with highlevel imagery processes.

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“…Biomedical engineering is starting to face this issue by developing adaptive robot controllers (Conforto et al, 2009;Reinhart and Steil, 2009). In order to cope with the highly non-linear relationship between sensory and motor information -which further depends on the degrees of freedom and anatomical constraints (Ionta et al, 2012) -one possible solution is the implementation of the so-called "inverse kinematics", i.e. the use of kinematics equations to estimate the parameters to be applied to a robotic device in order to reach a specific position and configuration.…”

Section: Classification and Modeling Techniques For Neuroprostheticsmentioning

confidence: 99%