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The sense of body: A multidisciplinary approach to body representation
Neuropsychologia 48 (2010) 643–644
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Neuropsychologia journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/neuropsychologia
Editorial
The sense of body: A multidisciplinary approach to body representation
The body, as the subject or the object of our experience, mediates all the interactions between our mind and the world. Sensory stimuli are perceived through sensory organs distributed on the body surface. Physical interactions with external objects occur via the different body parts. Not surprisingly, both the human experience of the body itself and the concepts used to depict it are steeped in intellectual history. However, the experience of the body is rarely invoked in a unanimous manner in life sciences, mind sciences and the humanities. Should the experience of one’s body be conceptualized as a straightforward neurophysiological process, a psychological structure, or an essentially private, scientifically inaccessible, subjective event? Like other psychological phenomena, the experience of one’s body calls for parallel biological, behavioural and first-person styles of exploration. That the brain is in the body is a physical fact. The reverse statement is true as well: the body is in the brain, as there are multiple neural and mental representations of the body, each endowed with a specific function, which supports different kinds of interaction between the self and the external world. We addressed the versatile and prevailing implications of body representations for psychology, cognitive neuroscience and philosophy during an interdisciplinary Summer School entitled “The Sense of Body—a multidisciplinary approach to body representation”, University of Bologna, Italy, 16–22, June 2008 (http://www.senseofbody.eu/). The theme of the Summer School highlighted, the complex phenomenology of bodily experience, and, at the same time, emphasized the need of approaching this topic from different, integrated perspectives, including psychology, neuropsychology, neurophysiology and philosophy. This Neuropsychologia Special Issue collects the different contributions from the Summer School to debate the neurocognitive bases of different dimensions of our sense of body. These contributions are organized along four different main areas. The first section of this special issue focuses on the notion that there are multiple mental representations of the body in the brain. At the most basic level, body representations arise from unisensory inputs originating from different body parts, which are then combined into global, multisensory body percepts, with different sensory, motor, emotional and social functions. Medina and Coslett and Longo, Azanon and Haggard approach the issue of how complex representations of the body and of the body in space may be constructed from somatosensory, proprioceptive and visual signals, by reviewing a number of behavioural, neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies. De Vignemont critically revises the dichotomy between the so-called body schema, that is a dynamic, continuously up-dated, usually implicit representation of the body parts and their position in space, and the body image, that is an abstract,
0028-3932/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.12.004
semantic, time-stable representation, which is retrieved explicitly and consciously. Tessari, Ottoboni, Symes and Cubelli present an experimental paradigm to study body structural description, that is a topographical map of the location and size of body parts relative to one another. Finally, Corradi-dell’Acqua and Tessari approach the issue of how representations of one’s own body influence visual processing of the bodies of others. Body representation directly implies a subject to whom the body belongs and who experiences that body. The second section of this special issue addresses the question of embodied self, that is, the relationship between the sense of body and the sense of self. Tsakiris proposes a neurocognitive model to explain how body ownership, i.e., the phenomenological experience that “this body is mine”, is constructed from integrating on-line, bodily related, multisensory information on a pre-existing stored model of the body. In line with this view, Zopf, Savage and Williams present an experimental investigation that aims to measure body ownership and its constraints. Legrand focuses on how one is conscious of one’s own body through consciousness of both its physicality and its subjectivity, and how an imbalance between these dimensions relative to each other would result in pathological forms of embodiment. Rochat explains how the initially implicit sense of bodily self as a differentiated entity develops during infancy to become explicit, conceptual and, more importantly, public and social. The self-interacts with the external world through the body because the body is first and foremost an acting body. The third section of this Special Issue, therefore, explores the relationship between body representations and action. Gallese and Sinigaglia propose that the most primitive sense of body-self is given as a source or power for action, as it is guided by the interaction with other bodies through mirror mechanisms. Daprati, Sirigu and Nico discuss how body and action representations are implemented in the right and left parietal cortices, respectively, and how such representations might be integrated to produce a unique experience of one’s own body in motion. The relationship between body and action is also at the basis of the embodied cognition view, according to which cognitive processes, including language, depend on the kind of body we possess and how we move it. Borghi and Cimatti propose that language should be considered a form of action as well, and therefore, according to this view, language can contribute to form a unitary sense of the bodily self as well as to extend the bodily boundaries. Rueschmeyer, Pfeiffer and Bekkering provide experimental evidence about the relationship between language, body and action, showing that body schema information and brain areas representing the body are involved in processing object words with action semantic features.
644
Editorial / Neuropsychologia 48 (2010) 643–644
Finally, the body occupies a space where body actions are realized. The brain selectively represents the space immediately surrounding the body. This peripersonal space is an action space. In the fourth section, devoted to peripersonal space representation, Macaluso and Maravita explain how visual and tactile signals are specifically combined to develop a coherent, multisensory sense of the space around the body, necessary to support the interaction with external objects. Brozzoli, Cardinali, Pavani and Farnè show how visuo-tactile integration within the peripersonal space is specific for and depends on action planning and execution. Bassolino, Serino, Ubaldi and Làdavas demonstrate that the limits of peripersonal space can be extended by using a virtual tool, such as the computer mouse, thanks to which an action performed near the body exerts its effect on the far space. Finally, Magosso, Ursino, di Pellegrino, Làdavas and Serino propose a neural network model of representations of peripersonal space and the dynamic properties of these representations; the network was also used to generate a new prediction, which was then experimentally tested in a neuropsychological patient. Our aim was to provide a timely collection of contributions that showcases the current state-of-the-art in research on body representation. Probably, many of the papers collected here will generate more questions than those to which they try to provide answers. We hope that the collection of articles in this Special Issue will inspire young and senior researchers interested in exploring the cognitive and neural processes that define our sense of embodiment by addressing the new questions emerging from this Special Issue. We would like to express our gratitude to the editors of neuropsychogia for providing us with this prestigious platform, and for their support during the preparation of this special issue; especially to Andrew Mayes, whose guidance was of enormous help at all stages of this process. Acknowledgments The Summer School “The Sense of Body—a multidisciplinary approach to body representation” was funded by University of
Bologna, Institute for Advanced Studies, ISA TOPICS grant 2008 and the European Science Foundation EUROCORES Programme CNCC, supported by funds from the EC Sixth Framework Programme under Contract no. ERAS-CT-2003-980409. The authors also thank University of Bologna Summer School Office, Associazione Italiana Psicologi and EMS – Sistemi Elettromedicali for their contributions. Alessia Tessari ∗ Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università degli Studi di Bologna, Viale Berti Pichat 5, 40127 Bologna, Italy Manos Tsakiris Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, UK a
a
Anna M. Borghi a,b Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università degli Studi di Bologna, Italy b Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, Rome, Italy Andrea Serino a,b Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università degli Studi di Bologna, Italy b Centro studi ricerche in Neuroscienze Cognitive, Cesena, Italy ∗ Corresponding
author. Tel.: +39 051 2091821; fax: +39 051 243086. E-mail address: [email protected] (A. Tessari) Available online 11 December 2009
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Neuropsychologia journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/neuropsychologia
Editorial
The sense of body: A multidisciplinary approach to body representation
The body, as the subject or the object of our experience, mediates all the interactions between our mind and the world. Sensory stimuli are perceived through sensory organs distributed on the body surface. Physical interactions with external objects occur via the different body parts. Not surprisingly, both the human experience of the body itself and the concepts used to depict it are steeped in intellectual history. However, the experience of the body is rarely invoked in a unanimous manner in life sciences, mind sciences and the humanities. Should the experience of one’s body be conceptualized as a straightforward neurophysiological process, a psychological structure, or an essentially private, scientifically inaccessible, subjective event? Like other psychological phenomena, the experience of one’s body calls for parallel biological, behavioural and first-person styles of exploration. That the brain is in the body is a physical fact. The reverse statement is true as well: the body is in the brain, as there are multiple neural and mental representations of the body, each endowed with a specific function, which supports different kinds of interaction between the self and the external world. We addressed the versatile and prevailing implications of body representations for psychology, cognitive neuroscience and philosophy during an interdisciplinary Summer School entitled “The Sense of Body—a multidisciplinary approach to body representation”, University of Bologna, Italy, 16–22, June 2008 (http://www.senseofbody.eu/). The theme of the Summer School highlighted, the complex phenomenology of bodily experience, and, at the same time, emphasized the need of approaching this topic from different, integrated perspectives, including psychology, neuropsychology, neurophysiology and philosophy. This Neuropsychologia Special Issue collects the different contributions from the Summer School to debate the neurocognitive bases of different dimensions of our sense of body. These contributions are organized along four different main areas. The first section of this special issue focuses on the notion that there are multiple mental representations of the body in the brain. At the most basic level, body representations arise from unisensory inputs originating from different body parts, which are then combined into global, multisensory body percepts, with different sensory, motor, emotional and social functions. Medina and Coslett and Longo, Azanon and Haggard approach the issue of how complex representations of the body and of the body in space may be constructed from somatosensory, proprioceptive and visual signals, by reviewing a number of behavioural, neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies. De Vignemont critically revises the dichotomy between the so-called body schema, that is a dynamic, continuously up-dated, usually implicit representation of the body parts and their position in space, and the body image, that is an abstract,
0028-3932/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.12.004
semantic, time-stable representation, which is retrieved explicitly and consciously. Tessari, Ottoboni, Symes and Cubelli present an experimental paradigm to study body structural description, that is a topographical map of the location and size of body parts relative to one another. Finally, Corradi-dell’Acqua and Tessari approach the issue of how representations of one’s own body influence visual processing of the bodies of others. Body representation directly implies a subject to whom the body belongs and who experiences that body. The second section of this special issue addresses the question of embodied self, that is, the relationship between the sense of body and the sense of self. Tsakiris proposes a neurocognitive model to explain how body ownership, i.e., the phenomenological experience that “this body is mine”, is constructed from integrating on-line, bodily related, multisensory information on a pre-existing stored model of the body. In line with this view, Zopf, Savage and Williams present an experimental investigation that aims to measure body ownership and its constraints. Legrand focuses on how one is conscious of one’s own body through consciousness of both its physicality and its subjectivity, and how an imbalance between these dimensions relative to each other would result in pathological forms of embodiment. Rochat explains how the initially implicit sense of bodily self as a differentiated entity develops during infancy to become explicit, conceptual and, more importantly, public and social. The self-interacts with the external world through the body because the body is first and foremost an acting body. The third section of this Special Issue, therefore, explores the relationship between body representations and action. Gallese and Sinigaglia propose that the most primitive sense of body-self is given as a source or power for action, as it is guided by the interaction with other bodies through mirror mechanisms. Daprati, Sirigu and Nico discuss how body and action representations are implemented in the right and left parietal cortices, respectively, and how such representations might be integrated to produce a unique experience of one’s own body in motion. The relationship between body and action is also at the basis of the embodied cognition view, according to which cognitive processes, including language, depend on the kind of body we possess and how we move it. Borghi and Cimatti propose that language should be considered a form of action as well, and therefore, according to this view, language can contribute to form a unitary sense of the bodily self as well as to extend the bodily boundaries. Rueschmeyer, Pfeiffer and Bekkering provide experimental evidence about the relationship between language, body and action, showing that body schema information and brain areas representing the body are involved in processing object words with action semantic features.
644
Editorial / Neuropsychologia 48 (2010) 643–644
Finally, the body occupies a space where body actions are realized. The brain selectively represents the space immediately surrounding the body. This peripersonal space is an action space. In the fourth section, devoted to peripersonal space representation, Macaluso and Maravita explain how visual and tactile signals are specifically combined to develop a coherent, multisensory sense of the space around the body, necessary to support the interaction with external objects. Brozzoli, Cardinali, Pavani and Farnè show how visuo-tactile integration within the peripersonal space is specific for and depends on action planning and execution. Bassolino, Serino, Ubaldi and Làdavas demonstrate that the limits of peripersonal space can be extended by using a virtual tool, such as the computer mouse, thanks to which an action performed near the body exerts its effect on the far space. Finally, Magosso, Ursino, di Pellegrino, Làdavas and Serino propose a neural network model of representations of peripersonal space and the dynamic properties of these representations; the network was also used to generate a new prediction, which was then experimentally tested in a neuropsychological patient. Our aim was to provide a timely collection of contributions that showcases the current state-of-the-art in research on body representation. Probably, many of the papers collected here will generate more questions than those to which they try to provide answers. We hope that the collection of articles in this Special Issue will inspire young and senior researchers interested in exploring the cognitive and neural processes that define our sense of embodiment by addressing the new questions emerging from this Special Issue. We would like to express our gratitude to the editors of neuropsychogia for providing us with this prestigious platform, and for their support during the preparation of this special issue; especially to Andrew Mayes, whose guidance was of enormous help at all stages of this process. Acknowledgments The Summer School “The Sense of Body—a multidisciplinary approach to body representation” was funded by University of
Bologna, Institute for Advanced Studies, ISA TOPICS grant 2008 and the European Science Foundation EUROCORES Programme CNCC, supported by funds from the EC Sixth Framework Programme under Contract no. ERAS-CT-2003-980409. The authors also thank University of Bologna Summer School Office, Associazione Italiana Psicologi and EMS – Sistemi Elettromedicali for their contributions. Alessia Tessari ∗ Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università degli Studi di Bologna, Viale Berti Pichat 5, 40127 Bologna, Italy Manos Tsakiris Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, UK a
a
Anna M. Borghi a,b Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università degli Studi di Bologna, Italy b Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, Rome, Italy Andrea Serino a,b Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università degli Studi di Bologna, Italy b Centro studi ricerche in Neuroscienze Cognitive, Cesena, Italy ∗ Corresponding
author. Tel.: +39 051 2091821; fax: +39 051 243086. E-mail address: [email protected] (A. Tessari) Available online 11 December 2009