title: Spinal cord injury affects the interplay between visual and sensorimotor representations of the body.
abstract: The brain integrates multiple sensory inputs, including somatosensory and visual inputs, to produce a representation of the body. Spinal cord injury (SCI) interrupts the communication between brain and body and the effects of this deafferentation on body representation are poorly understood. We investigated whether the relative weight of somatosensory and visual frames of reference for body representation is altered in individuals with incomplete or complete SCI (affecting lower limbs' somatosensation), with respect to controls. To study the influence of afferent somatosensory information on body representation, participants verbally judged the laterality of rotated images of feet, hands, and whole-bodies (mental rotation task) in two different postures (participants' body parts were hidden from view). We found that (i) complete SCI disrupts the influence of postural changes on the representation of the deafferented body parts (feet, but not hands) and (ii) regardless of posture, whole-body representation progressively deteriorates proportionally to SCI completeness. These results demonstrate that the cortical representation of the body is dynamic, responsive, and adaptable to contingent conditions, in that the role of somatosensation is altered and partially compensated with a change in the relative weight of somatosensory versus visual bodily representations.
authors: Rehabilitation Engineering Laboratory, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.|The Laboratory for Investigative Neurophysiology (The LINE), Department of Radiology and Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University Hospital Center (CHUV) and University of Lausanne (UNIL), Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors: Silvio
authors: S
authors: Ionta
authors: Spinal Cord Injury Center, Balgrist University Hospital, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.|University College Physiotherapy Thim van der Laan, Landquart, Switzerland.|Department of Business Economics, Health and Social Care, University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland, Landquart/Manno, Switzerland.
authors: Michael
authors: M
authors: Villiger
authors: Spinal Cord Injury Center, Balgrist University Hospital, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
authors: Catherine R
authors: CR
authors: Jutzeler
authors: Spinal Cord Injury Center, Balgrist University Hospital, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.|Department of Brain Repair and Rehabilitation, UCL Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, UK.|Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, UCL Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, UK.|Department of Neurophysics, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive, and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.
authors: Patrick
authors: P
authors: Freund
authors: Spinal Cord Injury Center, Balgrist University Hospital, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
authors: Armin
authors: A
authors: Curt
authors: Rehabilitation Engineering Laboratory, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
authors: Roger
authors: R
authors: Gassert
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001828:Body Image; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006225:Hand / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D010264:Paraplegia / Q000503:physiopathology; D011782:Quadriplegia / Q000503:physiopathology; D013003:Somatosensory Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D013119:Spinal Cord Injuries / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000534:rehabilitation; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult