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Degraded Visibility Body-Specifically Affects Mental Rotation
Zoé Rotach1, Claude Beazley1, Silvio Ionta1
1Sensory-Motor Lab (SeMoLa), Department of Ophthalmology-University of Lausanne, Jules Gonin Eye Hospital-Fondation Asile des Aveugles, 1004 Lausanne, Switzerland.
Behavioral Sciences (Basel, Switzerland)
|September 28, 2024
Summary
Visual degradation alters body perception, shifting mental representation strategies for hands and feet but not the whole body. This highlights how sensory changes impact our cognitive strategies for body image.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Human Perception
- Body Representation
Background:
- Perception of one's own body is influenced by sensory input.
- Visual degradation can cause shifts in the reference frame for mental body representation.
- Previous studies focused on hand representation, leaving other body parts unexplored.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if visual degradation affects mental representation of hands, feet, and full body.
- To determine if sensory input reduction induces body-specific visual-to-motor shifts.
- To explore how altered sensory input modulates cognitive strategies in body representation.
Main Methods:
- 35 neurotypical participants performed mental rotation tasks (laterality judgment) on hand, foot, and full-body images.
- Image visibility was manipulated by altering figure/background contrast.
- Response times (RT) were analyzed in relation to visibility changes and image viewpoint.
Main Results:
- Reduced image visibility steepened RT slopes for mental rotation of hands (palm view) and feet (dorsum view).
- No significant changes in RT slopes were observed for full-body images.
- Steeper RT slopes suggest a shift towards motor-based strategies, while flatter slopes indicate vision-based strategies.
Conclusions:
- Visual deterioration induces body-specific shifts between motor- and vision-based cognitive strategies for mental body representation.
- The brain adapts body representation strategies based on sensory input availability.
- These findings reveal the dynamic nature of body perception and cognitive strategy modulation.
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