During the rubber hand illusion (RHI), subjects experience an artificial hand as part of their own body, while the real hand is subject to a sort of 'disembodiment'. Can this altered belief about the body also affect physiological mechanisms involved in body-ownership, such as motor control? Here we ask whether the excitability of the motor pathways to the real (disembodied) hand are affected by the illusion. Our results show that the amplitude of the motor-evoked potentials recorded from the real hand is significantly reduced, with respect to baseline, when subjects in the synchronous (but not in the asynchronous) condition experience the fake hand as their own. This finding contributes to the theoretical understanding of the relationship between body-ownership and motor system, and provides the first physiological evidence that a significant drop in motor excitability in M1 hand circuits accompanies the disembodiment of the real hand during the RHI experience.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.14972.001

No abstract

a b s t r a c tWhat enables individuals to act together? Recent discoveries suggest that a variety of mechanisms are involved. But something fundamental is yet to be investigated. In joint action, agents represent a collective goal, or so it is often assumed. But how, if at all, are collective goals represented in joint action and how do such representations impact performance? To investigate this question we adapted a bimanual paradigm, the circle-line drawing paradigm, to contrast two agents acting in parallel with two agents performing a joint action. Participants were required to draw lines or circles while observing circles or lines being drawn. The findings indicate that interpersonal motor coupling may occur in joint but not parallel action. This suggests that participants in joint actions can represent collective goals motorically.

Autism spectrum conditions (ASC) are characterized by social-communicative and motor coordination difficulties but in many cases also by an impaired capability to imagine movements. In this study we found that while two handed coordination in ASC can be developed as well as in typically developed persons, the development of motor imagery could still be immature in ASC, leading to difficulties in imagining, understanding as well as programming and coordinating complex movements.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

The COPM (Canadian Occupational Performance Measure) is a tool that is based on the identification of self-perceived performance and satisfaction problems in the performance of occupations, allowing the creation of a hierarchy in the order of the interventions to be carried out, and speeding up the identification of the necessary AT (Assistive Technologies). Given the importance of the caregiver’s perception about their own performance in the design of AT, this research examines the caregiver’s profile through the COPM. A sample of 40 caregivers volunteered to participate in the study. A cluster analysis was carried out on the COPM scores. Two caregiver profiles were found in relation to the COPM measure, one with low scores on performance and satisfaction and another with high scores on both of these two variables. The main predictor was found to be the self-perception of performance. The structure was replicated through a hierarchical cluster analysis, where the role of caregivers was of interest. These results are relevant on both a theoretical and practical level.