How visual experience impacts the internal and external spatial mapping of sensorimotor functions

Crollen, Virginie; Albouy, Geneviève; Leporé, Franco; Collignon, Olivier

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-01158-9

Cited by 35 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Such an effect of posture on the participants' performance was present in the three groups of patients and was already shown for CRPS patients in previous studies (Moseley, Gallace & Spence, 2009;Moseley, Gallace & Iannetti, 2012) (but see Yamamoto & Kitazawa (2001) for an exception). Decreased performance during TOJ tasks with somatosensory stimuli when crossing the hands on which the stimuli are applied is a very recurrent and strong effect throughout the literature (De Paepe et al, 2015;Yamamoto & Kitazawa, 2001;Shore, Spry & Spence, 2002;Sambo et al, 2013;Azañón & Soto-Faraco, 2008;Wada, Yamamoto & Kitazawa, 2004;Crollen et al, 2017;Vanderclausen et al, in press). Such an effect is supposed to be due to a conflict between a somatotopic representation of somatosensory stimuli, that is, the ability to represent them according to which body parts are stimulated, and a spatiotopic representation, that is, the ability to represent somatosensory sensations according to where the stimulated body parts are located in external space.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An investigation of perceptual biases in complex regional pain syndrome

Paepe

Legrain

Biest

et al. 2020

PeerJ

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Patients with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) report cognitive difficulties, affecting the ability to represent, perceive and use their affected limb. Moseley, Gallace & Spence (2009) observed that CRPS patients tend to bias the perception of tactile stimulation away from the pathological limb. Interestingly, this bias was reversed when CRPS patients were asked to cross their arms, implying that this bias is embedded in a complex representation of the body that takes into account the position of body-parts. Other studies have failed to replicate this finding (Filbrich et al., 2017) or have even found a bias in the opposite direction (Sumitani et al., 2007). Moreover, perceptual biases in CRPS patients have not often been compared to these of other chronic pain patients. Chronic pain patients are often characterized by an excessive focus of attention for bodily sensations. We might therefore expect that non-CRPS pain patients would show a bias towards instead of away from their affected limb. The aim of this study was to replicate the study of Moseley, Gallace & Spence (2009) and to extend it by comparing perceptual biases in a CRPS group with two non-CRPS pain control groups (i.e., chronic unilateral wrist and shoulder pain patients). In a temporal order judgment (TOJ) task, participants reported which of two tactile stimuli, one applied to either hand at various intervals, was perceived as occurring first. TOJs were made, either with the arms in a normal (uncrossed) position, or with the arms crossed over the body midline. We found no consistent perceptual biases in either of the patient groups and in either of the conditions (crossed/uncrossed). Individual differences were large and might, at least partly, be explained by other variables, such as pain duration and temperature differences between the pathological and non-pathological hand. Additional studies need to take these variables into account by, for example, comparing biases in CRPS (and non-CRPS) patients in an acute versus a chronic pain state.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An investigation of perceptual biases in complex regional pain syndrome

Paepe

Legrain

Biest

et al. 2020

PeerJ

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“…There is abundant evidence that congenitally blind individuals prefer using an anatomical rather than external spatial code for touch, at least when the context does not require external coding 16,19,39 . For instance, attentionrelated somatosensory ERP effects in the time range 100-120 ms and 160-250 ms post-stimulus are reduced by hand crossing in sighted, but not in blind individuals 19 .…”

Section: Attention But Not Posture Modulates Touch-related Alpha-bamentioning

confidence: 99%

Alpha-band oscillations reflect external spatial coding for tactile stimuli in sighted, but not in congenitally blind humans

Schubert

Buchholz

Foecker

et al. 2018

Preprint

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We investigated the function of oscillatory alpha-band activity in the neural coding of spatial information during tactile processing. Sighted humans concurrently encode tactile location in skin-based and, after integration with posture, external spatial reference frames, whereas congenitally blind humans preferably use skin-based coding. Accordingly, lateralization of alpha-band activity in parietal regions during attentional orienting in expectance of tactile stimulation reflected external spatial coding in sighted, but skin-based coding in blind humans. Here, we asked whether alpha-band activity plays a similar role in spatial coding for tactile processing, that is, after the stimulus has been received. Sighted and congenitally blind participants were cued to attend to one hand in order to detect rare tactile deviant stimuli at this hand while ignoring tactile deviants at the other hand and tactile standard stimuli at both hands. The reference frames encoded by oscillatory activity during tactile processing were probed by adopting either an uncrossed or crossed hand posture. In sighted participants, attended relative to unattended standard stimuli suppressed the power in the alpha-band over ipsilateral centro-parietal and occipital cortex. Hand crossing attenuated this attentional modulation predominantly over ipsilateral posteriorparietal cortex. In contrast, although contralateral alphaactivity was enhanced for attended versus unattended stimuli in blind participants, no crossing effects were evident in the oscillatory activity of this group. These findings suggest that oscillatory alpha-band activity plays a pivotal role in the neural coding of external spatial information for touch.

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“…Congenitally blind people, in contrast, do not show any crossing-hand deficit when involved 46 in a tactile TOJ task (Röder et al, 2004;Crollen et al, 2017). This suggests that the default 47 remapping of passive touch into external spatial coordinates is acquired during development as a 48 consequence of visual experience.…”

Section: Introduction 27mentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual experience shapes the neural networks remapping touch into external space

Crollen

Lazzouni

Rezk

et al. 2017

Preprint

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Localizing touch relies on the activation of skin-based and externally defined spatial frames of references. Psychophysical studies have demonstrated that early visual deprivation prevents the automatic remapping of touch into external space. We used fMRI to characterize how visual experience impacts on the brain circuits dedicated to the spatial processing of touch. Sighted and congenitally blind humans (male and female) performed a tactile temporal order judgment (TOJ) task, either with the hands uncrossed or crossed over the body midline. Behavioral data confirmed that crossing the hands has a detrimental effect on TOJ judgments in sighted but not in blind. Crucially, the crossed hand posture elicited more activity in a fronto-parietal network in the sighted group only. Psychophysiological interaction analysis revealed that the congenitally blind showed enhanced functional connectivity between parietal and frontal regions in the crossed versus uncrossed hand postures. Our results demonstrate that visual experience scaffolds the neural implementation of touch perception.Significance statementAlthough we seamlessly localize tactile events in our daily life, it is not a trivial operation because the hands move constantly within the peripersonal space. To process touch correctly, the brain has therefore to take the current position of the limbs into account and remap them to their location in the external world. In sighted, parietal and premotor areas support this process. However, while visual experience has been suggested to support the implementation of the automatic external remapping of touch, no studies so far have investigated how early visual deprivation alters the brain network supporting touch localization. Examining this question is therefore crucial to conclusively determine the intrinsic role vision plays in scaffolding the neural implementation of touch perception.

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How visual experience impacts the internal and external spatial mapping of sensorimotor functions

Cited by 35 publications

References 51 publications

An investigation of perceptual biases in complex regional pain syndrome

An investigation of perceptual biases in complex regional pain syndrome

Alpha-band oscillations reflect external spatial coding for tactile stimuli in sighted, but not in congenitally blind humans

Visual experience shapes the neural networks remapping touch into external space

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