Sensing with tools extends somatosensory processing beyond the body

Miller, Luke; Montroni, Luca; Koun, Éric; Salemme, Roméo; Hayward, Vincent; Farnè, Alessandro

doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0460-0

Cited by 137 publications

(204 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Traditionally, body representation in the sensorimotor cortex is considered to be highly adaptive even in the adult brain (26,27) however recent research contributes a new perspective on its malleability (12,13). Tools have been suggested to update the biological body representation, for example by tool-body integration (28)(29)(30). Yet, tools are normally used to replace the capacity of the hand, rather than to accompany it.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neurocognitive consequences of hand augmentation

Kieliba

Clode

Maimon-Mor

et al. 2020

Preprint

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From hand tools to cyborgs, humans have long been fascinated by the opportunities afforded by augmenting ourselves. Here, we studied how motor augmentation with an extra robotic thumb (the Third Thumb) impacts the biological hand representation in the brains of ablebodied people. Participants were tested on a variety of behavioural and neuroimaging tests designed to interrogate the augmented hand's representation before and after 5-days of semi-intensive training. Training improved the Thumb's motor control, dexterity and handrobot coordination, even when cognitive load was increased or when vision was occluded, and resulted in increased sense of embodiment over the robotic Thumb. Thumb usage also weakened natural kinematic hand synergies. Importantly, brain decoding of the augmented hand's motor representation demonstrated mild collapsing of the canonical hand structure following training, suggesting that motor augmentation may disrupt the biological hand representation. Together, our findings unveil critical neurocognitive considerations for designing human body augmentation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neurocognitive consequences of hand augmentation

Kieliba

Clode

Maimon-Mor

et al. 2020

Preprint

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“…Fourth, we predict that a similar pattern of perceptual variability will be found when localizing touch on a hand-held tool. Indeed, humans can accurately localize where a tool has been touched (Miller et al, 2018;Yamamoto and Kitazawa, 2001). We recently found evidence that mechanisms in somatosensory cortex for localizing touch on an arm are re-used to localize touch on a tool (Miller et al, 2019a).…”

Section: Model Predictionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A neural surveyor to map touch on the body

Miller

Fabio

Beers

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Perhaps the most recognizable sensory map in all of neuroscience is the somatosensory homunculus. Though it seems straightforward, this simple representation belies the complex link between an activation in somatosensory Area 3b and the associated touch location on the body. Any isolated activation is spatially ambiguous without a neural decoder that can read its position within the entire map, though how this is computed by neural networks is unknown.We propose that somatosensory cortex implements multilateration, a common computation used by surveying and GPS systems to localize objects. Specifically, to decode touch location on the body, the somatosensory system estimates the relative distance between the afferent input and the body's joints. We show that a simple feedforward neural network which captures the receptive field properties of somatosensory cortex implements a Bayes-optimal multilateral decoder via a combination of bell-shaped (Area 3b) and sigmoidal (Areas 1/2) tuning curves. Simulations demonstrated that this decoder produced a unique pattern of localization variability between two joints that was not produced by other known neural decoders. Finally, we identify this neural signature of multilateration in actual psychophysical experiments, suggesting that it is a candidate computational mechanism underlying tactile localization. take place in the frontal and parietal cortices (Burnod et al., 1999;Crawford et al., 2004;Medendorp et al., 2005;Pesaran et al., 2006).Equally crucial to localizing objects in the environment is localizing objects on the personal space of the body. Despite over 180 years of research on the sense of touch (Weber, 1834), the computations underlying tactile localization remain largely unknown. Recent accounts have suggested that tactile localization requires two computational steps Medina and Coslett, 2010). First, afferent input must be localized within a topographic map in

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“…One paradigm that demonstrates the malleability of bodily and spatial representations is tool-use. Tool-use causes the multisensory representations of the body and peripersonal space to update [13,40,44], whereby the nervous system changes the way it uses sensory information to enable tools to become functional and sensory extensions of the body [49]. For example, using rake-like tools leads to a perceived lengthening of arm and extends peripersonal space towards the distal end of the tool [12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterising sensorimotor adaptation in Complex Regional Pain Syndrome

Vitterso

Buckingham²,

Halicka

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Distorted representations of the body and peripersonal space are common in Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), and might modulate its symptoms (e.g. asymmetric limb temperature). In pain-free people, such representations are malleable, and update when we interact with objects in our environment (e.g. during tool-use). Distortions are also common after immobilisation, but quickly normalise once movement is regained. We tested the hypothesis that people with CRPS have problems updating bodily and spatial representations, which contributes to the maintenance of their distorted representations by preventing normalization. We also explored spatially defined modulations of hand temperature asymmetries, and any influence of updating bodily and spatial representations on this effect. Thirty-six people with unilateral CRPS (18 upper limb, 18 lower limb) and 36 pain-free controls completed tool-use tasks considered to alter body and peripersonal space representations (measured using tactile distance judgements and a visuotactile crossmodal congruency task, respectively). We also tested how the arrangement (crossed, uncrossed) of the hands and tools affected hand temperature. In upper limb CRPS the non-affected arm representation updated normally, but the affected arm representation updated in the opposite to normal direction. A similar pattern was seen in lower limbs CRPS, although not significant. Furthermore, people with CRPS showed more pronounced updating of peripersonal space than the controls. We did not observe any modulation of hand temperature asymmetries by the arrangement of hands or tools. Our findings suggest enhanced malleability of bodily and spatial representations in CRPS, potentially implicating central mechanisms in the aetiology of this condition.

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Sensing with tools extends somatosensory processing beyond the body

Cited by 137 publications

References 31 publications

Neurocognitive consequences of hand augmentation

Neurocognitive consequences of hand augmentation

A neural surveyor to map touch on the body

Characterising sensorimotor adaptation in Complex Regional Pain Syndrome

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