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A Modified Lean and Release Technique to Emphasize Response Inhibition and Action Selection in Reactive Balance

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Published on: March 19, 2020

Posture modulates implicit hand maps.

Matthew R Longo¹

¹Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, United Kingdom.

Consciousness and Cognition

|June 29, 2015

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Altering hand posture rapidly changes how the brain represents hand size. This study shows implicit body representations adapt quickly to internal hand position changes, impacting somatosensation.

Keywords:

Body representation Plasticity Position sense Posture

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Somatosensation
Body Representation

Background:

Somatosensation relies on internal body representations.
Position sense is known to utilize a distorted body map.
Altered hand posture can induce plastic changes in somatosensory processing.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate how changes in internal hand posture affect implicit body representations.
To determine if hand posture influences the brain's map of hand structure.

Main Methods:

Participants localized finger landmarks (knuckles, tips) in two distinct hand postures: fingers splayed (Apart) and fingers together (Together).
Implicit maps of hand structure were constructed by comparing the relative locations of landmark judgments.
Changes in represented hand size and shape were analyzed between postures.

Main Results:

Spreading fingers apart significantly increased the implicit representation of hand size.
No significant effect on the implicit representation of hand shape was observed.
Internal hand posture rapidly modulates the brain's representation of the hand.

Conclusions:

Internal hand posture dynamically influences the implicit body representation of the hand.
These findings align with known effects of postural changes on somatosensory cortical processing.
The brain rapidly adapts its internal hand map based on current limb configuration.