Left-right judgment of haptic stimuli representing the human hand.

Abstract

The handedness recognition of visually perceived body parts engages motor representations that are constrained by the same biomechanical factors that limit the execution of real movements. In the present study, we used small plastic cutouts that represented the human hand to investigate the properties of mental images generated during their haptic exploration. Our working hypothesis was that any handedness recognition task that involves body parts depends on motor imagery. Forty-four blindfolded, right-handed volunteers participated in a handedness evaluation experiment using their index finger to explore either the back or palm view of a haptic stimulus that represented the human hand. The stimuli were presented in four different orientations, and we measured the subjects' response times. Our results showed that stimulus configurations that resemble awkward positions of the human hand are associated with longer response times (p < .006), indicating that the haptic exploration of stimuli that represent body parts also leads to motor imagery that is constrained by biomechanical factors.

Vision- and touch-dependent brain correlates of body-related mental processing

“…In line with previous findings regarding mental rotation of haptic (Kitada et al, 2009;Rangel et al, 2010) and visual hand stimuli (Cooper & Shepard, 1975;Marmor & Zaback, 1976;Sekiyama, 1982), we found that, for both sensory modalities, a longer RT was associated with a greater disparity of the hand's upright orientation. Such a result is typical for mental rotation of body parts (Cooper & Shepard, 1975;de Lange et al, 2006;Rangel et al, 2010;Vingerhoets et al, 2002) and is assumed to reflect the influence of biomechanical constraints on imagined hand movements (Schwoebel et al, 2001). The present results are consistent with previous findings showing shorter RT for the mental rotation of visually-versus haptically-presented hands (Kitada et al, 2009;Rangel et al, 2010).…”

“…Although similar findings on response time have been reported in the context of both visually- (Chen et al, 2019;Cooper & Shepard, 1975;Ionta et al, 2007;Parsons, 1994;Sekiyama, 1982) and haptically-based mental rotation of hands (Kitada et al, 2010;Rangel et al, 2010), the neural differences between haptically-and visually-mediated mental rotation of hands are not yet fully understood. Since the relative weighting of the type of imagery in mental rotation of hands may result in distinct patterns of brain activity, our null hypothesis is that mental rotation of both visually-and haptically-presented hands triggers the same type of mental imagery, leading to similar patterns of brain activity.…”

“…The activation of the default mode network (DMN) is related to internally-oriented attention (Andrews-Hanna et al, 2014;Fox et al, 2005;Raichle et al, 2001) and considered detrimental for externally-oriented task performance (Mason et al, 2007;Weissman et al, 2006). Therefore, incremental perceptual updating in the haptic stimuli exploration (and therefore high cognitive load (Rangel et al, 2010)) versus the immediate perception of visual stimuli should result in less interference of DMN activity on haptic mental rotation of hands. Thus, we also hypothesize that a greater interference of internally-directed cognition on task performance is observed mainly through activity in the default mode network (DMN) during presentation of visual stimuli.…”

Appraisal of Space Words and Allocation of Emotion Words in Bodily Space

“…Research in hand laterality tasks complements the findings reported above by suggesting that right-handers are faster to identify right hands than left hands. Left-handers show a reversed pattern but tend to show no facilitation for either hand (see [30] – [31] ). Additionally, the evidence indicates that left-handers are less lateralised than right-handers.…”

Priming effect of figures that represent external objects or human body parts.

“…In the Hand group in which the participants considered the stimulus to be their own hands, the dorsal view of their hand yielded faster responses than the palm view (Lameira, Guimarães-Silva, Ferreira, WerneckGalvão, Pereira Jr, & Gawryszewski, 2008b;Lameira et al, 2009;Parsons, 1994;Rangel et al, 2010). This effect supports the finding that the amount of time used to determine the laterality of a hand figure is reliably influenced by the actual posture of the responding body part during the task (Jeannerod, 1994;Jeanerod & Decety, 1995;Lameira et al, 2008a;Lameira et al, 2009;Mercier, Aballea, Vargas, Paillard, & Sirigu, 2005;Parsons, 1987Parsons, , 1994Parsons & Fox, 1998;Sirigu & Duhamel, 2001;Vargas, Oliver, Craighero, Fadiga, Duhamel, & Sirigu, 2004).…”