Dataset Information

Visual and somatosensory information contribute to distortions of the body model.

ABSTRACT: Distorted representations of the body are observed in healthy individuals as well as in neurological and psychiatric disorders. Distortions of the body model have been attributed to the somatotopic cerebral representation. Recently, it has been demonstrated that visual biases also contribute to those distortions. To better understand the sources of such distortions, we compared the metric representations across five body parts affording different degrees of tactile sensitivity and visual accessibility. We evaluated their perceived dimensions using a Line Length Judgment task. We found that most body parts were underestimated in their dimensions. The estimation error relative to their length was predicted by their tactile acuity, supporting the influence of the cortical somatotopy on the body model. However, tactile acuity did not explain the distortions observed for the width. Visual accessibility in turn does appear to mediate body distortions, as we observed that the dimensions of the dorsal portion of the neck were the only ones accurately perceived. Coherent with the multisensory nature of body representations, we argue that the perceived dimensions of body parts are estimated by integrating visual and somatosensory information, each weighted differently, based on their availability for a given body part and a given spatial dimension.

SUBMITTER: Peviani V

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6753068 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Visual and somatosensory information contribute to distortions of the body model.

Peviani Valeria V Melloni Lucia L Bottini Gabriella G

Scientific reports 20190919 1

Distorted representations of the body are observed in healthy individuals as well as in neurological and psychiatric disorders. Distortions of the body model have been attributed to the somatotopic cerebral representation. Recently, it has been demonstrated that visual biases also contribute to those distortions. To better understand the sources of such distortions, we compared the metric representations across five body parts affording different degrees of tactile sensitivity and visual accessi ...[more]

PMID: 31537888

Similar Datasets

Project description:Multisensory integration plays a central role in perception, as all behaviors usually require the input of different sensory signals. For instance, for a foraging honeybee the association of a food source includes the combination of olfactory and visual cues to be categorized as a flower. Moreover, homing after successful foraging using celestial cues and the panoramic scenery may be dominated by visual cues. Hence, dependent on the context, one modality might be leading and influence the processing of other modalities. To unravel the complex neural mechanisms behind this process we studied honeybee mushroom body output neurons (MBON). MBONs represent the first processing level after olfactory-visual convergence in the honeybee brain. This was physiologically confirmed in our previous study by characterizing a subpopulation of multisensory MBONs. These neurons categorize incoming sensory inputs into olfactory, visual, and olfactory-visual information. However, in addition to multisensory units a prominent population of MBONs was sensitive to visual cues only. Therefore, we asked which visual features might be represented at this high-order integration level. Using extracellular, multi-unit recordings in combination with visual and olfactory stimulation, we separated MBONs with multisensory responses from purely visually driven MBONs. Further analysis revealed, for the first time, that visually driven MBONs of both groups encode detailed aspects within this individual modality, such as light intensity and light identity. Moreover, we show that these features are separated by different MBON subpopulations, for example by extracting information about brightness and wavelength. Most interestingly, the latter MBON population was tuned to separate UV-light from other light stimuli, which were only poorly differentiated from each other. A third MBON subpopulation was neither tuned to brightness nor to wavelength and encoded the general presence of light. Taken together, our results support the view that the mushroom body, a high-order sensory integration, learning and memory center in the insect brain, categorizes sensory information by separating different behaviorally relevant aspects of the multisensory scenery and that these categories are channeled into distinct MBON subpopulations.

Dataset Information

Visual and somatosensory information contribute to distortions of the body model.

Publications

Visual and somatosensory information contribute to distortions of the body model.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets