Neural mechanisms of embodiment: asomatognosia due to premotor cortex damage.
BACKGROUND
Patients with asomatognosia generally describe parts of their body as missing or disappeared from corporeal awareness. This disturbance is generally attributed to damage in the right posterior parietal cortex. However, recent neuroimaging and electrophysiological studies suggest that corporeal awareness and embodiment of body parts are instead linked to the premotor cortex of both hemispheres.


METHODS
We describe a patient with asomatognosia of her left arm due to damage in the right premotor and motor cortices. The patient's pathological embodiment for her left arm was associated with mild left somatosensory loss, mild frontal dysfunction, and a behavioral deficit in the mental imagery of human arms.


CONCLUSIONS
Asomatognosia may also be associated with damage to the right premotor cortex.
Arzy
Shahar
S
Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain-Mind Institute, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Overney
Leila S
LS
Landis
Theodor
T
Blanke
Olaf
O
D000377:Agnosia / Q000473:pathology* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001132:Arm; D001828:Body Image; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006225:Hand; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008875:Middle Aged; D009044:Motor Cortex / Q000473:pathology* / Q000503:physiopathology*