Visual and somatosensory information contribute to distortions of the body model.

ABSTRACT: Distorted representations of the body are observed in healthy individuals as well as in neurological and psychiatric disorders. Distortions of the body model have been attributed to the somatotopic cerebral representation. Recently, it has been demonstrated that visual biases also contribute to those distortions. To better understand the sources of such distortions, we compared the metric representations across five body parts affording different degrees of tactile sensitivity and visual accessibility. We evaluated their perceived dimensions using a Line Length Judgment task. We found that most body parts were underestimated in their dimensions. The estimation error relative to their length was predicted by their tactile acuity, supporting the influence of the cortical somatotopy on the bo

SUBMITTER: Peviani V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6753068 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature