Tonic somatosensory responses and deficits of tactile awareness converge in the parietal operculum
Articolo
Data di Pubblicazione:
2021
Citazione:
Tonic somatosensory responses and deficits of tactile awareness converge in the parietal operculum / M. Del Vecchio, C. Fossataro, F. Zauli, I. Sartori, A. Pigorini, P. D’Orio, B. Abarrategui, S. Russo, E. Mikulan, F. Caruana, G. Rizzolatti, F. Garbarini, P. Avanzini. - In: BRAIN. - ISSN 1460-2156. - 144:12(2021), pp. 3779-3787. [10.1093/brain/awab384]
Abstract:
Although clinical neuroscience and the neuroscience of consciousness have long sought mechanistic explanations of tactile-awareness disorders, mechanistic insights are rare, mainly because of the difficulty of depicting the fine-grained neural dynamics underlying somatosensory processes.
Here, we combined the stereo-EEG responses to somatosensory stimulation with the lesion mapping of patients with a tactile-awareness disorder, namely tactile extinction.
Whereas stereo-EEG responses present different temporal patterns, including early/phasic and long-lasting/tonic activities, tactile-extinction lesion mapping co-localizes only with the latter. Overlaps are limited to the posterior part of the perisylvian regions, suggesting that tonic activities may play a role in sustaining tactile awareness. To assess this hypothesis further, we correlated the prevalence of tonic responses with the tactile-extinction lesion mapping, showing that they follow the same topographical gradient. Finally, in parallel with the notion that visuotactile stimulation improves detection in tactile-extinction patients, we demonstrated an enhancement of tonic responses to visuotactile stimuli, with a strong voxel-wise correlation with the lesion mapping.
The combination of these results establishes tonic responses in the parietal operculum as the ideal neural correlate of tactile awareness.
Tipologia IRIS:
01 - Articolo su periodico
Elenco autori:
M. Del Vecchio, C. Fossataro, F. Zauli, I. Sartori, A. Pigorini, P. D’Orio, B. Abarrategui, S. Russo, E. Mikulan, F. Caruana, G. Rizzolatti, F. Garbarini, P. Avanzini
Link alla scheda completa:
Link al Full Text: