Visual peripersonal space centred on the face in humans

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Science
• Visual Perception

Background:

• The brain computes visual space across multiple regions for diverse behaviors.
• Specific areas like the ventral intraparietal cortex, putamen, and premotor cortex represent peripersonal space near the face.
• Neurons in these areas are bimodal, responding to both tactile stimuli on the face and visual stimuli near it.

Purpose of the Study:

• To demonstrate the existence of visual peripersonal space centered on the face in humans.
• To investigate the spatial correspondence between visual and tactile receptive fields in near-face space.
• To provide evidence for body-part-centered coordinate systems in human visual space representation.

Main Methods:

• Investigated patients with right hemispheric lesions.
• Assessed cross-modal visuotactile extinction and unimodal tactile extinction.
• Evaluated visuotactile facilitation effects by presenting visual stimuli near the face and tactile stimuli to the hand.

Main Results:

• Visual stimuli near the face extinguished tactile stimuli on the opposite side of the body (visuotactile extinction).
• Visual stimuli near the face facilitated the detection of tactile stimuli on the same side of the body.
• These visuotactile effects were significantly reduced when visual stimuli were presented far from the face.

Conclusions:

• The findings confirm a visual peripersonal space representation centered on the face in humans.
• The results support the hypothesis of visual space coded in body-part-centered coordinates.
• This study highlights the modularity of human visual space processing.