title: An attentional approach to study mental representations of different parts of the hand.
abstract: The aim of this study is to investigate whether the fingers are represented separately from the palm. An exogenous spatial orientation paradigm was used where participants had to detect a tactile stimulus that could appear on the palm, the middle finger or the ring finger of the left hand. The tactile target was preceded by a non-predictive cue using different stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOA). We observed a Facilitation Effect in the palm and inhibition of return (IOR) for fingers using a short cue-target SOA, whereas the IOR was found in fingers and palm in long cue-target SOA. Also we observed a 'Cue above Target' effect (facilitation effect when the Cue had appeared distal to the target location in a vertical line) at the long SOA. Together, we suggest that the general pattern of results supports the proposed hypothesis about the different mental representation of fingers and palms, but with a considerable and hierarchical interrelation between them.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire d'Étude des Mécanismes Cognitifs, Département de Psychologie Cognitive and Neuropsychologie, Institut de Psychologie, Université Lyon 2, Lyon, France. gergal@ugr.es
authors.forename: Germán
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Gálvez-García
authors.forename: Alyanne M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: De Haan
authors.forename: Juan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lupiañez
authors.forename: H Chris
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Dijkerman
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005385:Fingers / Q000502:physiology*; D006225:Hand / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology; D014110:Touch / Q000502:physiology; D055698:Touch Perception / Q000502:physiology*