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Vestibular contributions to bodily awareness.
Elisa Raffaella Ferrè1, Eleonora Vagnoni, Patrick Haggard
1Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK. e.ferre@ucl.ac.uk
Neuropsychologia
|April 30, 2013
Summary
The vestibular system influences how we perceive touch location on our hands, shifting sensations towards the wrist. However, it does not alter our internal representation of hand size or shape.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Somatosensory research
- Vestibular system function
Background:
- The vestibular system interacts with multisensory cortical networks, including somatosensory areas.
- Clinical observations suggest vestibular signals are crucial for abstract body representations.
- Existing research on vestibular contributions to somatic cognition is limited.
Purpose of the Study:
- To establish a theoretical framework and experimental method for investigating vestibular contributions to somatic cognition.
- To examine the effects of galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) on somatoperception and somatorepresentation.
- To differentiate the influence of vestibular input on tactile localization versus body part representation.
Main Methods:
- Investigated the effects of galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) on tactile stimulus localization on the hand (somatoperception).
- Assessed the impact of GVS on the implicit representation of hand size and shape (somatorepresentation).
- Compared the effects of different GVS polarities (e.g., right anodal/left cathodal vs. left anodal/right cathodal) on localization errors.
Main Results:
- Vestibular input significantly influenced the localization of tactile stimuli on the hand, with perceived shifts towards the wrist.
- Specific GVS polarities demonstrated differential effects on localization bias, with bilateral stimulation causing stronger effects.
- Vestibular stimulation did not affect the internal representation of hand shape, confirming existing findings of distorted body models.
Conclusions:
- Vestibular input plays a role in the registration of somatosensory information onto the body map (somatoperception).
- Vestibular input does not influence stored knowledge of the body's spatial organization as a physical object (somatorepresentation).
- The findings differentiate the impact of vestibular signals on sensory input processing versus internal body schema maintenance.
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