Testing the exteroceptive function of nociception: The role of visual experience in shaping the spatial representations of nociceptive inputs.

Autor: Vanderclausen C; Institute of Neuroscience, Université catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium; Psychological Sciences Research Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. Electronic address: camille.vanderclausen@uclouvain.be., Bourgois M; Institute of Neuroscience, Université catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium., De Volder A; Institute of Neuroscience, Université catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium; Psychological Sciences Research Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium., Legrain V; Institute of Neuroscience, Université catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium; Psychological Sciences Research Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior [Cortex] 2020 May; Vol. 126, pp. 26-38. Date of Electronic Publication: 2020 Jan 22.
DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2019.12.024
Abstrakt: Adequately localizing pain is crucial to protect the body against physical damage and react to the stimulus in external space having caused such damage. Accordingly, it is hypothesized that nociceptive inputs are remapped from a somatotopic reference frame, representing the skin surface, towards a spatiotopic frame, representing the body parts in external space. This ability is thought to be developed and shaped by early visual experience. To test this hypothesis, normally sighted and early blind participants performed temporal order judgment tasks during which they judged which of two nociceptive stimuli applied on each hand's dorsum was perceived as first delivered. Crucially, tasks were performed with the hands either in an uncrossed posture or crossed over body midline. While early blinds were not affected by the posture, performances of the normally sighted participants decreased in the crossed condition relative to the uncrossed condition. This indicates that nociceptive stimuli were automatically remapped into a spatiotopic representation that interfered with somatotopy in normally sighted individuals, whereas early blinds seemed to mostly rely on a somatotopic representation to localize nociceptive inputs. Accordingly, the plasticity of the nociceptive system would not purely depend on bodily experiences but also on crossmodal interactions between nociception and vision during early sensory experience.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest None.
(Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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