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The anatomo-clinical picture of the pathological embodiment over someone else's body part after stroke
- Source :
- Cortex. 130:203-219
- Publication Year :
- 2020
- Publisher :
- Elsevier BV, 2020.
-
Abstract
- Recently, a monothematic delusion of body ownership due to brain damage (i.e., the embodiment of someone else's body part within the patient's sensorimotor system) has been extensively investigated. Here we aimed at defining in-depth the clinical features and the neural correlates of the delusion. Ninety-six stroke patients in a sub-acute or chronic phase of the illness were assessed with a full ad-hoc protocol to evaluate the embodiment of an alien arm under different conditions. A sub-group of seventy-five hemiplegic patients was also evaluated for the embodiment of the movements of the alien arm. Fifty-five patients were studied to identify the neural bases of the delusion by means of voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping approach. Our results show that, in forty percent of the whole sample, simply viewing the alien arm triggered the delusion, but only if it was a real human arm and that was seen from a 1st person perspective in an anatomically-correct position. In the hemiplegic sub-group, the presence of the embodiment of the alien arm was always accompanied by the embodiment of its passive and active movements. Furthermore, the delusion was significantly associated to primary proprioceptive deficits and to damages of the corona radiata and the superior longitudinal fasciculus. To conclude, we show that the pathological embodiment of an alien arm is well-characterized by recurrent and specific features and might be explained as a disconnection deficit, mainly involving white matter tracts. The proposed exhaustive protocol can be successfully employed to assess stroke-induced disorders of body awareness, unveiling even their more undetectable or covert clinical forms.
- Subjects :
- medicine.medical_specialty
Cognitive Neuroscience
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Monothematic delusion
Body awareness
050105 experimental psychology
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
Physical medicine and rehabilitation
Delusion
medicine
Humans
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Human Body
Neural correlates of consciousness
Sense of agency
05 social sciences
Perspective (graphical)
Superior longitudinal fasciculus
Awareness
Stroke
Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology
medicine.anatomical_structure
Brain Injuries
Disconnection
medicine.symptom
Psychology
030217 neurology & neurosurgery
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 00109452
- Volume :
- 130
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Cortex
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....6c250d225bb7f8faeb197f8536cf0ff3