Distinct contributions of Brodmann areas 1 and 2 to body ownership

Martuzzi, Roberto; Zwaag, Wietske van der; Dieguez, Sebastian; Serino, Andrea; Gruetter, Rolf; Blanke, Olaf

doi:10.1093/scan/nsv031

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Distinct contributions of Brodmann areas 1 and 2 to body ownership

Martuzzi, Roberto Center for Neuroprosthetics, School of Life Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland - Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain Mind Institute, School of Life Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland
Zwaag, Wietske van der Centre d’Imagerie Biomédical de Lausanne, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland
Dieguez, Sebastian Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain Mind Institute, School of Life Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland - Laboratory for Cognitive and Neurological Sciences, Neurology Unit, Department of Medicine, Faculty of Sciences, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
Serino, Andrea Center for Neuroprosthetics, School of Life Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland - Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain Mind Institute, School of Life Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland
Gruetter, Rolf Centre d’Imagerie Biomédical de Lausanne, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland -
Blanke, Olaf Center for Neuroprosthetics, School of Life Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland - Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain Mind Institute, School of Life Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland - Department of Neurology, University Hospital, Geneva, Switzerland

25.03.2015

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Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. - 2015, vol. 10, no. 11, p. 1449-1459

English Although body ownership—i.e. the feeling that our bodies belong to us—modulates activity within the primary somatosensory cortex (S1), it is still unknown whether this modulation occurs within a somatotopically defined portion of S1. We induced an illusory feeling of ownership for another person’s finger by asking participants to hold their palm against another person’s palm and to stroke the two joined index fingers with the index and thumb of their other hand. This illusion (numbness illusion) does not occur if the stroking is performed asynchronously or by the other person. We combined this somatosensory paradigm with ultra-high field functional magnetic resonance imaging finger mapping to study whether illusory body ownership modulates activity within different finger-specific areas of S1. The results revealed that the numbness illusion is associated with activity in Brodmann area (BA) 1 within the representation of the finger stroking the other person’s finger and in BA 2 contralateral to the stroked finger. These results show that changes in bodily experience modulate the activity within certain subregions of S1, with a different finger-topographical selectivity between the representations of the stroking and of the stroked hand, and reveal that the high degree of somatosensory specialization in S1 extends to bodily self-consciousness.

Faculty

Faculté des sciences et de médecine

Department

Département de Médecine

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