SCIENCE@home

Multiple Dissociations in Patients With Disorders of Body Awareness: Implications for the Study of Consciousness

G. Bottini,F. Magnani,Gerardo Salvato,M. Gandola

Published 2018 in Frontiers in Psychology

ABSTRACT

Elucidating the nature of consciousness has become one of the most relevant challenges in modern neuroscience. The study of patients with brain damage who exhibit selective impairments in awareness has contributed significantly to redefining the concept of consciousness, shedding light on at least two interesting aspects of its organization: the presence of behavioral and anatomical domain-specific dissociations and the possibility of modulating disturbances in awareness via both central and peripheral stimulations (e.g., caloric vestibular stimulation1—CVS—or transcranial Direct Current Stimulation2—tDCS). Evidence emerging from these lines of research has provided information regarding the nature of conscious processes, their neural substrates, and their associated physiological processes. Anosognosia for hemiplegia (AHP), in which patients with brain damage deny the presence of their contralesional motor deficits (Babinski, 1914), represents how the conscious experience may be finely segmented. Indeed, motor anosognosia can manifest in a limb-specific and modality-specific fashion: For instance, it may affect the upper or lower limbs only (Von Hagen and Ives, 1937; Berti et al., 1996; Moro et al., 2011) and may concern either motor or sensory impairments (i.e., dissociations between AHP and anosognosia for hemianesthesia: AHA; see for exampleMarcel et al., 2004; Spinazzola et al., 2008; Pia et al., 2014). Moreover, previous studies have reported double dissociations between anosognosia and neglect (Bisiach et al., 1986; Berti et al., 1996; Marcel et al., 2004), revealing that AHP does not depend on the attentional deficits typical of Unilateral Spatial Neglect (Bisiach et al., 1986; Berti et al., 1996; Marcel et al., 2004). The existence of these dissociations suggests that brain lesions selectivity affect conscious processes, rather than inducing general and global impairments in awareness. Thus, patients may be aware of one deficit (e.g., hemianesthesia) yet unaware of another (e.g., hemiplegia).

PUBLICATION RECORD

CITATION MAP

EXTRACTION MAP

CLAIMS

  • No claims are published for this paper.

CONCEPTS

  • No concepts are published for this paper.

REFERENCES

Showing 1-47 of 47 references · Page 1 of 1

CITED BY