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Influence of sensorimotor experience on hand and foot structural representations

Aschauer, Kathrin
(2021)

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Aschauer_51391500_2021.pdf
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Aschauer_51391500_2021_Appendix.pdf
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Details

Supervisors
Andres, Michael
Faculty
Faculté de psychologie, logopédie, sexologie et des sciences de la famille
Degree label
Master [120] en logopédie, à finalité spécialisée
Abstract
Neuropsychological studies suggest that the structural representation of the body, which specifies the spatial relations between body parts, is distinct from its sensorimotor representation, which keeps track of dynamic changes in body posture. However, experimental studies have recently shown that structural representations are not as fixed as initially suggested. Hence, the current hand posture can alter the mental representation of the spatial relations between fingers. In the present study, we tested whether the influence of sensorimotor experience on the structural representation of the body’s extremities is related to dexterity, considering that integration of digit posture and spatial information is important to perform individual movements of the body’s extremities. To test our hypothesis, we compared the influence of hand or foot posture on numerical estimations of the interval in-between the fingers or the toes of forty-one healthy participants in a gnosis task involving the discrimination of tactile stimulations. The dominant hand and the dominant foot of participants were tested separately with the digits in a joined or a splayed posture. The results showed that participants underestimated the number of digits in-between two tactile stimulations when fingers were joined rather than splayed. This effect was observed for the hand but not for the foot, though a dramatic increase of errors was observed for the foot compared to the hand. Hence, changes in posture selectively altered the structural representation of fingers. This shows that a body part with higher dexterity, especially in terms of elaboration of finely tuned movements, has a different impact on the integration of motor experience into structural representation of the body.