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‘See Me, Feel Me’: Prismatic Adaptation of an Alien Limb Ameliorates Spatial Neglect in a Patient Affected by Pathological Embodiment

Pathological embodiment (E+) is a specific contralesional delusion of body ownership, observed following brain damage, in which patients embody someone else’s arm and its movements within their own body schema whenever the contralesional ‘alien’ arm is presented in a body-congruent position (i.e., 1...

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Autores principales: Ronga, Irene, Garbarini, Francesca, Neppi-Modona, Marco, Fossataro, Carlotta, Pyasik, Maria, Bruno, Valentina, Sarasso, Pietro, Barra, Giulia, Frigerio, Marta, Chiotti, Virginia Carola, Pia, Lorenzo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6339900/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30692952
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02726
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author Ronga, Irene
Garbarini, Francesca
Neppi-Modona, Marco
Fossataro, Carlotta
Pyasik, Maria
Bruno, Valentina
Sarasso, Pietro
Barra, Giulia
Frigerio, Marta
Chiotti, Virginia Carola
Pia, Lorenzo
author_facet Ronga, Irene
Garbarini, Francesca
Neppi-Modona, Marco
Fossataro, Carlotta
Pyasik, Maria
Bruno, Valentina
Sarasso, Pietro
Barra, Giulia
Frigerio, Marta
Chiotti, Virginia Carola
Pia, Lorenzo
author_sort Ronga, Irene
collection PubMed
description Pathological embodiment (E+) is a specific contralesional delusion of body ownership, observed following brain damage, in which patients embody someone else’s arm and its movements within their own body schema whenever the contralesional ‘alien’ arm is presented in a body-congruent position (i.e., 1st person perspective and aligned with the patient’s shoulder). This disorder is often associated with spatial neglect, a neurological syndrome in which patients are unaware of stimuli presented in the contralesional (often the left) space. Capitalizing on previous evidence demonstrating that prismatic adaptation of the ipsilesional arm to right-deviating prisms is effective in ameliorating neglect symptoms, here we investigated whether such amelioration also occurs in E+ patients with neglect when prismatic training is performed by the ‘alien’ embodied arm. Four left neglect patients (one with and three without pathological embodiment) underwent visuomotor prismatic training performed by an ‘alien’ arm. Specifically, while patients were wearing prismatic goggles shifting the visual field rightward, a co-experimenter’s left arm presented in a body-congruent perspective was repeatedly moved toward visual targets by another examiner. In a control condition, the co-experimenter’s arm was moved toward the targets from a body-incongruent position (i.e., 3rd person perspective). Neglect symptoms were assessed before and after training through paper-and-pencil tasks. In the E+ patient, neglect improved significantly more in 1st than in 3rd person perspective training, suggesting that prismatic adaptation of the ‘alien’ embodied arm is effective in modulating spatial representation. Conversely, for control E- patients (not embodying the ‘alien’ arm), we observed more limited improvements following training. These findings indicate that the ‘alien’ embodied arm is so deeply embedded in the patient body and motor schema that adaptation to prismatic lenses can affect multiple processing stages, from low level sensory-motor correspondences, to higher level body, motor and spatial maps, similarly as it occurs in normal subjects and neglect patients without pathological embodiment.
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spelling pubmed-63399002019-01-28 ‘See Me, Feel Me’: Prismatic Adaptation of an Alien Limb Ameliorates Spatial Neglect in a Patient Affected by Pathological Embodiment Ronga, Irene Garbarini, Francesca Neppi-Modona, Marco Fossataro, Carlotta Pyasik, Maria Bruno, Valentina Sarasso, Pietro Barra, Giulia Frigerio, Marta Chiotti, Virginia Carola Pia, Lorenzo Front Psychol Psychology Pathological embodiment (E+) is a specific contralesional delusion of body ownership, observed following brain damage, in which patients embody someone else’s arm and its movements within their own body schema whenever the contralesional ‘alien’ arm is presented in a body-congruent position (i.e., 1st person perspective and aligned with the patient’s shoulder). This disorder is often associated with spatial neglect, a neurological syndrome in which patients are unaware of stimuli presented in the contralesional (often the left) space. Capitalizing on previous evidence demonstrating that prismatic adaptation of the ipsilesional arm to right-deviating prisms is effective in ameliorating neglect symptoms, here we investigated whether such amelioration also occurs in E+ patients with neglect when prismatic training is performed by the ‘alien’ embodied arm. Four left neglect patients (one with and three without pathological embodiment) underwent visuomotor prismatic training performed by an ‘alien’ arm. Specifically, while patients were wearing prismatic goggles shifting the visual field rightward, a co-experimenter’s left arm presented in a body-congruent perspective was repeatedly moved toward visual targets by another examiner. In a control condition, the co-experimenter’s arm was moved toward the targets from a body-incongruent position (i.e., 3rd person perspective). Neglect symptoms were assessed before and after training through paper-and-pencil tasks. In the E+ patient, neglect improved significantly more in 1st than in 3rd person perspective training, suggesting that prismatic adaptation of the ‘alien’ embodied arm is effective in modulating spatial representation. Conversely, for control E- patients (not embodying the ‘alien’ arm), we observed more limited improvements following training. These findings indicate that the ‘alien’ embodied arm is so deeply embedded in the patient body and motor schema that adaptation to prismatic lenses can affect multiple processing stages, from low level sensory-motor correspondences, to higher level body, motor and spatial maps, similarly as it occurs in normal subjects and neglect patients without pathological embodiment. Frontiers Media S.A. 2019-01-14 /pmc/articles/PMC6339900/ /pubmed/30692952 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02726 Text en Copyright © 2019 Ronga, Garbarini, Neppi-Modona, Fossataro, Pyasik, Bruno, Sarasso, Barra, Frigerio, Chiotti and Pia. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Ronga, Irene
Garbarini, Francesca
Neppi-Modona, Marco
Fossataro, Carlotta
Pyasik, Maria
Bruno, Valentina
Sarasso, Pietro
Barra, Giulia
Frigerio, Marta
Chiotti, Virginia Carola
Pia, Lorenzo
‘See Me, Feel Me’: Prismatic Adaptation of an Alien Limb Ameliorates Spatial Neglect in a Patient Affected by Pathological Embodiment
title ‘See Me, Feel Me’: Prismatic Adaptation of an Alien Limb Ameliorates Spatial Neglect in a Patient Affected by Pathological Embodiment
title_full ‘See Me, Feel Me’: Prismatic Adaptation of an Alien Limb Ameliorates Spatial Neglect in a Patient Affected by Pathological Embodiment
title_fullStr ‘See Me, Feel Me’: Prismatic Adaptation of an Alien Limb Ameliorates Spatial Neglect in a Patient Affected by Pathological Embodiment
title_full_unstemmed ‘See Me, Feel Me’: Prismatic Adaptation of an Alien Limb Ameliorates Spatial Neglect in a Patient Affected by Pathological Embodiment
title_short ‘See Me, Feel Me’: Prismatic Adaptation of an Alien Limb Ameliorates Spatial Neglect in a Patient Affected by Pathological Embodiment
title_sort ‘see me, feel me’: prismatic adaptation of an alien limb ameliorates spatial neglect in a patient affected by pathological embodiment
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6339900/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30692952
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02726
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