scholarly journals Testing the exteroceptive function of nociception: the role of visual experience in shaping the spatial representations of nociceptive inputs

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camille Vanderclausen ◽  
Marion Bourgois ◽  
Anne De Volder ◽  
Valéry Legrain

AbstractAdequately localizing pain is crucial to protect the body against physical damage and react to the stimulus in external space having caused such damage. Accordingly, it is hypothesized that nociceptive inputs are remapped from a somatotopic reference frame, representing the skin surface, towards a spatiotopic frame, representing the body parts in external space. This ability is thought to be developed and shaped by early visual experience. To test this hypothesis, normally sighted and early blind participants performed temporal order judgment tasks during which they judged which of two nociceptive stimuli applied on each hand’s dorsum was perceived as first delivered. Crucially, tasks were performed with the hands either in an uncrossed posture or crossed over body midline. While early blinds were not affected by the posture, performances of the normally sighted participants decreased in the crossed condition relative to the uncrossed condition. This indicates that nociceptive stimuli were automatically remapped into a spatiotopic representation that interfered with somatotopy in normally sighted individuals, whereas early blinds seemed to mostly rely on a somatotopic representation to localize nociceptive inputs. Accordingly, the plasticity of the nociceptive system would not purely depend on bodily experiences but also on crossmodal interactions between nociception and vision during early sensory experience.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginie Crollen ◽  
Latifa Lazzouni ◽  
Mohamed Rezk ◽  
Antoine Bellemare ◽  
Franco Lepore ◽  
...  

AbstractLocalizing touch relies on the activation of skin-based and externally defined spatial frames of references. Psychophysical studies have demonstrated that early visual deprivation prevents the automatic remapping of touch into external space. We used fMRI to characterize how visual experience impacts on the brain circuits dedicated to the spatial processing of touch. Sighted and congenitally blind humans (male and female) performed a tactile temporal order judgment (TOJ) task, either with the hands uncrossed or crossed over the body midline. Behavioral data confirmed that crossing the hands has a detrimental effect on TOJ judgments in sighted but not in blind. Crucially, the crossed hand posture elicited more activity in a fronto-parietal network in the sighted group only. Psychophysiological interaction analysis revealed that the congenitally blind showed enhanced functional connectivity between parietal and frontal regions in the crossed versus uncrossed hand postures. Our results demonstrate that visual experience scaffolds the neural implementation of touch perception.Significance statementAlthough we seamlessly localize tactile events in our daily life, it is not a trivial operation because the hands move constantly within the peripersonal space. To process touch correctly, the brain has therefore to take the current position of the limbs into account and remap them to their location in the external world. In sighted, parietal and premotor areas support this process. However, while visual experience has been suggested to support the implementation of the automatic external remapping of touch, no studies so far have investigated how early visual deprivation alters the brain network supporting touch localization. Examining this question is therefore crucial to conclusively determine the intrinsic role vision plays in scaffolding the neural implementation of touch perception.



Perception ◽  
10.1068/p5853 ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 36 (10) ◽  
pp. 1547-1554 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Pavani ◽  
Massimiliano Zampini

When a hand (either real or fake) is stimulated in synchrony with our own hand concealed from view, the felt position of our own hand can be biased toward the location of the seen hand. This intriguing phenomenon relies on the brain's ability to detect statistical correlations in the multisensory inputs (ie visual, tactile, and proprioceptive), but it is also modulated by the pre-existing representation of one's own body. Nonetheless, researchers appear to have accepted the assumption that the size of the seen hand does not matter for this illusion to occur. Here we used a real-time video image of the participant's own hand to elicit the illusion, but we varied the hand size in the video image so that the seen hand was either reduced, veridical, or enlarged in comparison to the participant's own hand. The results showed that visible-hand size modulated the illusion, which was present for veridical and enlarged images of the hand, but absent when the visible hand was reduced. These findings indicate that very specific aspects of our own body image (ie hand size) can constrain the multisensory modulation of the body schema highlighted by the fake-hand illusion paradigm. In addition, they suggest an asymmetric tendency to acknowledge enlarged (but not reduced) images of body parts within our body representation.



2011 ◽  
Vol 279 (1732) ◽  
pp. 1287-1292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roi Holzman ◽  
David C. Collar ◽  
Samantha A. Price ◽  
C. Darrin Hulsey ◽  
Robert C. Thomson ◽  
...  

Morphological diversification does not proceed evenly across the organism. Some body parts tend to evolve at higher rates than others, and these rate biases are often attributed to sexual and natural selection or to genetic constraints. We hypothesized that variation in the rates of morphological evolution among body parts could also be related to the performance consequences of the functional systems that make up the body. Specifically, we tested the widely held expectation that the rate of evolution for a trait is negatively correlated with the strength of biomechanical trade-offs to which it is exposed. We quantified the magnitude of trade-offs acting on the morphological components of three feeding-related functional systems in four radiations of teleost fishes. After accounting for differences in the rates of morphological evolution between radiations, we found that traits that contribute more to performance trade-offs tend to evolve more rapidly, contrary to the prediction. While ecological and genetic factors are known to have strong effects on rates of phenotypic evolution, this study highlights the role of the biomechanical architecture of functional systems in biasing the rates and direction of trait evolution.



Body schema refers to the system of sensory-motor functions that enables control of the position of body parts in space, without conscious awareness of those parts. Body image refers to a conscious representation of the way the body appears—a set of conscious perceptions, affective attitudes, and beliefs pertaining to one’s own bodily image. In 2005, Shaun Gallagher published an influential book entitled ‘How the Body Shapes the Mind’. This book not only defined both body schema (BS) and body image (BI), but also explored the complicated relationship between the two. The book also established the idea that there is a double dissociation, whereby body schema and body image refer to two different, but closely related, systems. Given that many kinds of pathological cases can be described in terms of body schema and body image (phantom limbs, asomatognosia, apraxia, schizophrenia, anorexia, depersonalization, and body dysmorphic disorder, among others), we might expect to find a growing consensus about these concepts and the relevant neural activities connected to these systems. Instead, an examination of the scientific literature reveals continued ambiguity and disagreement. This volume brings together leading experts from the fields of philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry in a lively and productive dialogue. It explores fundamental questions about the relationship between body schema and body image, and addresses ongoing debates about the role of the brain and the role of social and cultural factors in our understanding of embodiment.



2004 ◽  
pp. 147-176
Author(s):  
Stanimir Rakic

In this paper I examine compound names of plants, animals, human beings and other things in which at least one nominal component designates a part of the body or clothes, or some basic elements of houshold in Serbian and English. The object of my analysis are complex derivatives of the type (adjective noun) + suffix in Serbian and componds of the type noun's + noun, noun + noun and adjective + noun in English. I try to show that there is a difference in metaphorical designation of human beings and other living creatures and things by such compound nouns. My thesis is that the metathorical designation of human beings by such compounds is based on the symbolic meaning of some words and expressions while the designation of other things and beings relies on noticed similarity. In Serbian language such designation is provided by comples derivatives praznoglavac 'empty-headed person', tupoglavac 'dullard' debolokoiac 'callos person', golobradac 'young, inexperienced person' zutokljunac 'tledling' (fig), in English chicken liver, beetle brain birdbrain, bonehead, butterfingers, bigwig, blackleg, blue blood bluestocking, eat's paw, deadhead,fat-guts,fathead, goldbrick (kol) hardhat, hardhead, greenhorn, redcoat (ist), redneck (sl), thickhead, etc. Polisemous compounds like eat's paw lend support for this thesis because their designation of human beings is based on symbolic meaning of some words or expressions. I hypothesize that the direction and extend of the possible metaphorization of names may be accounted for by the following hierarchy (11) people - animals - plants - meterial things. Such hierarchy is well supported by the observations of Lakoff (1987) and Taylor (1995) about the role of human body in early experience and perception ofthe reality. Different restrictions which may be imposed in the hierarchy (11) should be the matter of further study, some of which have been noted on this paper. The compounds of this type denoting people have metaphorically meaning conected with some pejorative uses. These compounds refer to some psychological or characteral features, and show that for the classification of people such features are much more important than physical properties. While the animals and plants are classified according to some charecteristics of their body parts, people are usually classified according to psychollogical characteristics or their social functions. I have also noted a difference in structure between compounds designation animals and those designating plants and other things. The designation of animals relies more on metonymy, and that of plants and other things on metaphor based on comparision of noticed similarities. In the compounds designating animals, the nominal component relatively seldom refers to the parts of plants or other things. I guess that the cause may be the fact that the anatomy of plants is very different from the anatomy of animals. As a consequence the structure adjective + noun is much more characteristic of the compounds designating animals in English than the structure noun's + noun, and the same holds, although in a lesser degree for the compounds designating humans. It is also noticeable that in English compounds whose second component a part of body or clothes the first component rarely designates animals. On the other hand the compounds (9), in which the nominal head refers to some superordinate species, the first component often designates animal species, but usually of a very different kind. These data seem to lend support for Goldvarg & Gluksberg's thesis (1998) that metaforical interpretation is favoured if the nominal constituents denote quite different entities.



Author(s):  
William G. Pooley

This chapter uses Félix Arnaudin’s notes towards a dictionary of the Gascon dialect of the Landes de Gascogne to explore everyday speech about the body. The dialect notes that Arnaudin carefully recorded in quotidian situations draw attention to a body focused on the legs and buttocks, discussed in terms of constant concern about stooping and bending. The language of the body was often violent and obscene, but could also be delicate and specific. Rich metaphors for body parts drew parallels between human exploitation and forestation. This was not a static folk language of the body, swept away by ‘modern’ ideas of the body, but an evolving way of talking about bodily experiences.



Author(s):  
Koji Mizoguchi

This chapter charts the trajectory of change of Jomon period clay anthropomorphic figurines in the Japanese archipelago. The earliest specimens embodied the perception of the body and female bodily experiences rather than accurately representing the body itself. Emphasis gradually shifted from the material embodiment of unmediated bodily perception and experiences to the visual representation of the body. Through this process, the subject of the representation expanded from the female body to the bodies of various categories of being, including animals and fantastic/supernatural beings, and the figurines came to embody the mutual transformability. These beings were networked to form an ‘animistic’ cosmology whose successful reproduction was metaphorically linked to that of human life and community. The decline of the symbolic role of the female reproductive faculty as the universal referent in the prayer for communal well-being led to the end of the Jomon clay anthropomorphic figurines.



Author(s):  
Frédérique de Vignemont

What are the implications of pervasive presence of multisensory interactions for bodily awareness? It has been assumed that bodily experiences exclusively result from bodily senses, with no influence from external senses, but vision is actually required to maximize the veridical perception of the body. Consequently, bodily experiences in those who have never seen are of a different kind to the way one normally experiences one’s body. Whether or not one is currently seeing one’s body, vision plays an essential role in delineating the boundaries of the body, in locating our body parts in space and in bridging the gap between what happens on the skin and what happens in the external world. In this sense, the bodily experiences of the sighted (or those who were once sighted) can be said to be constitutively multimodal.



Animals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 2734
Author(s):  
Paulina Cholewińska ◽  
Paulina Nazar ◽  
Andrzej Junkuszew ◽  
Jakub Smoliński ◽  
Katarzyna Czyż ◽  
...  

For decades, skin has been assigned the main role of an insulator of the inside of the body from the external environment, but it also plays a role in maintaining homeostasis. In this study, the level of selected bacterial phyla (Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria) was assessed in three sheep breeds (Świniarka sheep, Uhruska sheep and BCP line (synthetic sheep breed; n = 6) and in two breeds of goats (Boer, Saenian; n = 6) living in the same environment and fed on the same feed, where the aim was to identify differences in terms of race, species and individual differences. Significant differences were found in Firmicute, Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria phyla (p ≤ 0.05). Statistically significant and positive correlations were demonstrated between Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria, Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes or Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes. The obtained results suggest that the species and racial differences in the level of the studied bacterial phyla may also result from the physicochemical differences of the skin surface, as they could exacerbate the variations in humidity, temperature, composition of antimicrobial peptides (AMP) and lipid content. In addition, individual differences were observed, which indicate a similar effect of an individual on the microbiological composition of its organism.



2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-82
Author(s):  
Maïa Ponsonnet ◽  
Kitty-Jean Laginha

Abstract This article presents the first systematic typological study of emotional expressions involving body parts at the scale of a continent, namely the Australian continent. The role of body parts in figurative descriptions of emotions, a well-established phenomenon across the world, is known to be widespread in Australian languages. This article presents a typology of body-based emotional expressions across a balanced sample of 67 languages, where we found that at least 30 distinct body parts occur in emotional expressions. The belly is by far the most frequent, and a dozen others also have significant representation. The study shows how the properties of these body parts – e.g., whether they are internal organs or visible facial parts – partly determine which historical scenarios led to their linguistic associations with emotions, and in turn, their semantic and figurative properties.



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