The functional organisation of near peripersonal space
Poster Presentation

Alessandro Farne'
Department of Psychology University of Bologna & INSERM U534

M. Luisa Dematte'
Dept. of Cognitive Science and Education, University of Trento

Elisabetta Ladavas
Department of Psychology University of Bologna & CsrNC Cesena

     Abstract ID Number: 77
     Full text: Not available
     Last modified: March 19, 2005

Abstract
Recent findings demonstrated that a limited sector of space surrounding our body, i.e. the near peripersonal space, is represented through multisensory processes. In humans, multisensory coding of near peripersonal space has been revealed by showing that cross-modal visual-tactile extinction is mainly limited in the space near the hand, or the face. Here we addressed the question of whether the modular organisation of space also applies to the near peripersonal space representation. To this aim, cross-modal extinction has been assessed in a group of right brain-damaged patients with left tactile extinction trough several combinations of ipsilesional-visual and contralesional-tactile stimuli presented both between homologous body-parts (the two hands & sides of the face), and between non homologous body-parts (right hand + left face & right face + left hand). The results support the hypothesis that the near peripersonal space representation is not unitary, but rather organised in a modular fashion, and consists of (at least two) different spatial representations, one near the hand and another near the face. The relationship between visual-tactile and tactile extinction will be also discussed in the light of the present findings.