That's My Hand! Activity in Premotor Cortex Reflects Feeling of Ownership of a Limb

Abstract

When we look at our hands, we immediately know that they are part of our own body. This feeling of ownership of our limbs is a fundamental aspect of self-consciousness. We have studied the neuronal counterparts of this experience. A perceptual illusion was used to manipulate feelings of ownership of a rubber hand presented in front of healthy subjects while brain activity was measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging. The neural activity in the premotor cortex reflected the feeling of ownership of the hand. This suggests that multisensory integration in the premotor cortex provides a mechanism for bodily self-attribution.

Structural and functional hyperconnectivity within the sensorimotor system in xenomelia

“…One node, the right frontal operculum is considered to be a premotor region in the broader sense as well and could therefore also be accounted for the sensorimotor system. The frontal operculum is importantly involved in the rubber hand illusion (Ehrsson, Spence, & Passingham, 2004), which consists in a distorted sense of self of one particular body part (Lenggenhager, Hilti, & Brugger, 2015). More broadly speaking, the same region is involved in the construction and maintenance of a coherent representation of the entire body (Moseley et al., 2012; Tsakiris, Hesse, Boy, Haggard, & Fink, 2007), a representation arguably disturbed in xenomelia.…”

Shared electrophysiology mechanisms of body ownership and motor imagery

“…If the fake hand is threatened by bringing a needle near to it, other studies found that activity in the supplementary motor area (Ehrsson et al, 2007) and posterior parietal regions (Lloyd et al, 2006) reflects illusory ownership. In addition, activity in bilateral anterior insular and anterior cingulate cortices (Ehrsson et al, 2007) or activity in premotor cortex and cerebellum (Ehrsson et al, 2004) was found to correlate with the strength of ownership illusion (as measured by questionnaire ratings). In a PET study, Tsakiris et al (2007) reported that activity in the right posterior insula, sensorimotor cortices (precentral and postcentral gyri), as well as primary somatosensory cortex was associated with illusory hand ownership.…”

“…This visuo-tactile manipulation alters bodily experience, inducing the illusion that the artificial hand being touched is one's own hand (measured by questionnaire ratings) and is generally associated with a measurable mislocalization of the participant's hand towards the fake hand. The illusion does not occur when the stroking provided to the real hand and the artificial hand is not synchronous, when the fake hand does not match the posture of the real hand, or when control objects are stroked (Botvinick and Cohen, 1998;Ehrsson et al, 2004;Tsakiris and Haggard, 2005).…”

“…Using fMRI, illusory ownership as induced by synchronous visuo-tactile stroking on congruent fake hand postures was found to be reflected by BOLD activity in bilateral premotor cortices (Ehrsson et al, 2004), cerebellum (Ehrsson et al, 2005), and intraparietal cortices (Ehrsson et al, 2004(Ehrsson et al, , 2005. If the fake hand is threatened by bringing a needle near to it, other studies found that activity in the supplementary motor area (Ehrsson et al, 2007) and posterior parietal regions (Lloyd et al, 2006) reflects illusory ownership.…”

“…fMRI, PET, lesion mapping) have revealed a wide network of brain regions associated with illusory body ownership during the RHI. These regions include the intraparietal cortex, primary somatosensory cortex (precentral and postcentral gyri), the ventral premotor cortex, the right insular lobe, the anterior cingulate cortex, and the cerebellum (Ehrsson et al, 2004(Ehrsson et al, , 2005(Ehrsson et al, , 2007Lloyd et al, 2006;Tsakiris et al, 2007;Zeller et al, 2011).…”