Effects of hand posture on preparatory control processes and sensory modulations in tactile-spatial attention

Hands behind your back: effects of arm posture on tactile attention in the space behind the body

“…Such overlap is less likely (and therefore attentional selection can occur more rapidly) when hands are placed further away from each other and outward to the side, and least likely when the hands are positioned even further away from the front body midline, that is, close together behind the body. This would explain why the earliest effects of attentional selection between touch on the hands were found when the hands were placed close together behind the back (N80, the present study), followed by hands far apart behind the back (P100-N140, the present study) or in front (P100-N140, Gillmeister et al 2010;N140, Eimer et al 2004), and why later effects were found for hands close together in front of the body (N140, Eimer et al 2004;N200, Gillmeister et al 2010).…”

“…Allison et al 1989;De Santis et al 2007;Desmedt and Robertson 1977;Hari et al 1984;Mima et al 1998). Previous studies have shown effects of hand distance (Eimer et al 2004;Gillmeister et al 2010a) and of vision of the hands (Sambo et al 2009) on modulations reflecting transient attentional selection between the hands in the P100-N140 time range. In the present study, attentional effects at P100 and beyond were found irrespective of whether hands were close or further apart, however.…”

“…When proprioceptive distance between the hands is manipulated in front space, attentional effects are larger for far compared to near hands over N140 (Eimer et al 2004), or they occur earlier in processing for far (P100-N140) compared to near (N200) hands (Gillmeister et al 2010a), showing that attentional selection between the hands is more effective with greater hand distances. The reverse was found in the present study: attentional effects occurred earlier in processing for near (N80) compared to far (P100-N140) hands when the hands were held behind the back.…”

“…Previous ERP studies using hand distance to manipulate external spatial influences have shown that the closeness of tactile event locations interferes with tactile-spatial selection. Eimer et al (2004) showed that attentional modulations over somatosensory N140 component were smaller when the hands were near together than when they were far apart. Gillmeister et al (2010a) found that attentional effects were present later when the hands were near (N200) than when they were far (P100-N140 component range).…”

“…Driver and Grossenbacher 1996;Eimer et al 2001Eimer et al , 2004Gillmeister et al 2010a;Heed and Röder 2010;Kennett et al 2001;Spence et al 2000;Soto-Faraco et al 2004). Previous ERP studies using hand distance to manipulate external spatial influences have shown that the closeness of tactile event locations interferes with tactile-spatial selection.…”