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8 results

  • Chapter 5 - The Body Schema and Our Skills

  • Timothy D. Mooney, University College Dublin
  • Book:
    Merleau-Ponty's <i>Phenomenology of Perception</i>
    Published online:
    03 November 2022
    Print publication:
    17 November 2022, pp 105-129

  • Summary

    Here I commence my explication of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of the body schema. Our skills are deployed through this sub-reflective schema, which lies behind our pre-reflective or proprioceptive awareness of posture. I focus on his interpretation of the phenomenon of the use-phantom limb as silhouetting our ordinary performances because it is continuous with the rest of the body. Ordinarily our skilled readiness-of-hand and readiness-of-leg are not represented or objectified, not being thematic or focal powers of action. Rather they are ‘regions of silence’ that we take for granted. I show what the schema can exclude (inoperative areas of the body), what it can incorporate (implements it uses proficiently), and why it is an a priori condition of cognitive distanciation and of reckoning with the possible. We reckon with imagined actions that are immediate possibilities for us, and in the process we also draw on a reservoir of sedimented concepts and convictions.

Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception
  • On the Body Informed
  • Timothy D. Mooney
  • Published online:
    03 November 2022
    Print publication:
    17 November 2022
  • This is an advanced introduction to and original interpretation of Merleau-Ponty's greatest work, Phenomenology of Perception. Timothy Mooney provides a clear and compelling exposition of the theory of our projective being in the world, and demonstrates as never before the centrality of the body schema in the theory. Thanks to the schema's motor intentionality our bodies inhabit and appropriate space: our postures and perceptual fields are organised schematically when we move to realise our projects. Thus our lived bodies are ineliminably expressive in being both animated and outcome oriented through-and-through. Mooney also analyses the place of the work in the modern philosophical world, showing what Merleau-Ponty takes up from the Kantian and Phenomenological traditions and what he contributes to each. Casting a fresh light on his magnum opus, this book is essential reading for all those interested in the philosophy and phenomenology of the body.

  • 2 - Body Schema, Body Image, and Hypermodern Alterations

  • from Part II - Brain without Body, Body without Brain, and Contemporary Body Image Disorders
  • Fabio Gabrielli, Floriana Irtelli
  • Book:
    Body Image and Eating Disorders
    Published online:
    26 May 2022
    Print publication:
    09 June 2022, pp 27-41

  • Summary

    It is only in the last few years that some factors, such as the spread of eating disorders, closely related to bodily experience, have prompted researchers to a greater systematization of theory: in summary it is a scientific process which has led to the inclusion of all the perceptual, affective, and cognitive representations of the human body in two basic, intertwining concepts: body schema and body image. The body image is also generated and reorganized because of external stimuli. This process takes place on various levels: emotional, imaginary, sensory, and creative. The analysis of body image is therefore not a neurological issue, but a psychological one. In recent decades, scientific research has attached increasing importance to the interactive and relational components of the subject's psychological experience: it is not only intimate relationships that can affect human perceptions but also the wider social environment, such as the mass media, which reinforce beauty ideals or elicit changes in the way people perceive their own appearance and influence perceived norms.

  • Body Representation Alterations in Patients with Unilateral Brain Damage

  • Simona Raimo, Maddalena Boccia, Antonella Di Vita, Teresa Iona, Maria Cropano, Antonio Ammendolia, Roberto Colao, Valentina Angelillo, Antonio Maiorino, Cecilia Guariglia, Dario Grossi, Liana Palermo
  • Journal:
    Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society / Volume 28 / Issue 2 / February 2022
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    05 March 2021, pp. 130-142
    • Article
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  • Objective:

    Systematic studies about the impact of unilateral brain damage on the different body representations (body schema, body structural representation, and body semantics) are still rare. Aim of this study was to evaluate body representation deficits in a relatively large sample of patients with unilateral brain damage and to investigate the impact of right or left brain damage on body representations (BRs), independently from deficits in other cognitive processes.

    Method:

    Sixty-four patients with unilateral stroke (22 with left brain damage, LBD; 31 with right brain damage without neglect, RBD-N; 11 with right brain damage with neglect, RBD+N) and 41 healthy individuals underwent a specific battery including BR as well as control tasks.

    Results:

    In more than a third of the sample, selective (37.5%) and pure (31%) deficits of BR were presented and equally distributed among the different BRs (˜10% for each representation), with selective (27.2%) and pure (22.7%) body schema deficit mainly presented after left brain damage. As a group, patients with unilateral brain damage, independently of the side of lesion (LBD, RBD-N, RBD+N), had significantly worse performance on body structural representation with respect to healthy individuals, whereas LBD had numerically worse performance on body schema with respect to healthy individuals and RBD-N. No significant differences among groups were found on body semantics.

    Conclusion:

    BR deficits are not a rare consequence of unilateral brain damage and are independent of a more general cognitive dysfunction. Accordingly, the need for an accurate assessment and specific neuropsychological training in clinical settings is discussed.

Phantom Pains and Prosthetic Narratives

Phantom Pains and Prosthetic Narratives
  • From George Dedlow to Dante
  • Alastair Minnis
  • Published online:
    02 February 2021
    Print publication:
    18 February 2021
  • 'Phantom limb pain' designates the sensations which seem to emanate from limbs that in reality are missing. The phrase was coined by the American Civil War surgeon, Weir Mitchell, in reference to his fictional amputee, George Dedlow. Contemporary neuroscience holds that the brain encloses a schema which covers the whole body, and asserts its unity even if certain parts are missing. Reading backwards from Dedlow's sufferings, Alastair Minnis traces the medieval precedents and parallels, focusing on Augustine and Dante, who subscribed to the notion of a 'body in the soul'. Dante's souls in purgatory self-prosthesize with aerial phantoms as they long for the full embodiment which only the resurrection can bring. Is a complete body necessary for personhood? And how can the gamut of human feelings be run if parts or the entirety of one's body does not exist? Combining medieval studies and contemporary neuroscience, this absorbing study explores the fascinating and surprising history of phantom pain.

  • Stroke with supernumerary phantom limb: case study, review of literature and pathogenesis

  • Abhishek Srivastava, Arun B. Taly, Anupam Gupta, Thyloth Murali, Mohan L. Noone, Jagadisha Thirthahalli, B. N. Gangadhar, J. Keshav Kumar, P. N. Jayakumar
  • Journal:
    Acta Neuropsychiatrica / Volume 20 / Issue 5 / October 2008
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    24 June 2014, pp. 256-264
  • Objective:

    Constitute hypothesis for origin of supernumerary phantom limb (SPL) after stroke.

    Method:

    Single case description, review of literature and formulation of hypothesis.

    Results:

    A 59-year-old lady was evaluated for complaints of left-sided hemiparesis and extra limbs attached to her left shoulder for the past 7 months. Neuropsychological assessment revealed left hemineglect with SPL, and profile suggested bilateral frontal, right parietotemporal and basal ganglia involvement. Magnetic resonance imaging brain scan showed gliotic cavity secondary to the old haematoma in right putamen with white matter changes in the right frontoparietotemporal lobes.

    Conclusions:

    The conceptual framework of body schema can be used to classify many of the neurological disorders of body representation. Generation of SPL comes under the subtype of pathology of updating among the disorders of body schema. The continuous updating allows the body schema to modulate perceptual processing of objects according to their position in space. Brain areas classified as parts of motor system can, under pathological conditions (haemorrhage), influence body perception. So, when she used to move her arm, the representation of the estimated position was not updated by the motor commands. Sensory and motor information therefore becomes discrepant, and failure to integrate these two sources of information leads to loss of normal coherence, and the perceived shape of the body was altered by adding a SPL to accommodate the discrepancy.

  • Mental motor imagery and chronic pain: The foot laterality task

  • H. BRANCH COSLETT, JARED MEDINA, DASHA KLIOT, ADAM BURKEY
  • Journal:
    Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society / Volume 16 / Issue 4 / July 2010
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    12 April 2010, pp. 603-612

  • Several lines of evidence suggest that mental motor imagery is subserved by the same cognitive operations and brain structures that underlie action. Additionally, motor imagery is informed by the anticipated sensory consequences of action, including pain. We reasoned that motor imagery could provide a useful measure of chronic leg or foot pain. Forty subjects with leg pain (19 bilateral, 11 right, and 10 left leg pain), 42 subjects with chronic pain not involving the legs, and 38 controls were shown 12 different line drawings of the right or left foot and asked to indicate which foot was depicted. Previous work suggests that subjects perform this task by mentally rotating their foot to match the visually presented stimulus. All groups of subjects were slower and less accurate with stimuli that required a greater degree of mental rotation of their foot. Subjects with leg pain were both slower and less accurate than normal and pain control subjects in responding to drawings of a painful extremity. Furthermore, subjects with leg pain exhibited a significantly greater decrement in performance for stimuli that required larger amplitude mental rotations. These data suggest that motor imagery may provide important insights into the nature of the pain experience. (JINS, 2010, 16, 603–612.)

  • Somatosensory processes subserving perception and action

  • H. Chris Dijkerman, Edward H. F. de Haan
  • Journal:
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences / Volume 30 / Issue 2 / April 2007
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    20 August 2007, pp. 189-201

  • The functions of the somatosensory system are multiple. We use tactile input to localize and experience the various qualities of touch, and proprioceptive information to determine the position of different parts of the body with respect to each other, which provides fundamental information for action. Further, tactile exploration of the characteristics of external objects can result in conscious perceptual experience and stimulus or object recognition. Neuroanatomical studies suggest parallel processing as well as serial processing within the cerebral somatosensory system that reflect these separate functions, with one processing stream terminating in the posterior parietal cortex (PPC), and the other terminating in the insula. We suggest that, analogously to the organisation of the visual system, somatosensory processing for the guidance of action can be dissociated from the processing that leads to perception and memory. In addition, we find a second division between tactile information processing about external targets in service of object recognition and tactile information processing related to the body itself. We suggest the posterior parietal cortex subserves both perception and action, whereas the insula principally subserves perceptual recognition and learning.