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Translocation of the embodied self without visuospatial neglect
Annalena Venneri1, Roberta Pentore, Milena Cobelli
1Department of Neuroscience, University of Sheffield and Sheffield Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Sheffield, UK. a.venneri@sheffield.ac.uk
Neuropsychologia
|February 22, 2012
Summary
A stroke patient experienced severe allochiria, misattributing sensory input to the wrong body side, despite intact sensation and no neglect. This case highlights the brain's complex body representation beyond simple sensory registration.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Neurology
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Allochiria, a rare sensory disorder, involves mislocalization of stimuli.
- Body representation relies on integrating multimodal sensory information.
- Previous cases of allochiria often co-occur with somatosensory deficits or neglect.
Observation:
- A 68-year-old woman with a right-sided ischemic stroke presented with hemiplegia, anosognosia, and severe allochiria.
- Despite deficits, she had no somatosensory or visuospatial neglect.
- Brain MRI revealed extensive damage to the right parietal, temporal, and mesial frontal cortex.
Findings:
- The patient mislocalized stimuli to the opposite side of her body, even reporting phantom sensations on the wrong side.
- This mirror-reversed body representation occurred without visuospatial neglect.
- Cognitive functions, including language comprehension and left-right orientation (except for body parts), were largely intact.
Implications:
- This case is the first description of severe allochiria for body representation without neglect.
- It supports the concept of a high-level, multimodal brain representation of the body map.
- The findings suggest body representation is actively constructed and updated, not just a passive sensory registration.
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