Hand amputees may report that a tactile stimulus delivered to the stump region or the face ipsilateral to the amputation induces the sensation of being touched on the phantom. Given the representational contiguity between hand and face, this phenomenon has been related to electrophysiologically demonstrated orderly remappings occurring in deafferented somatosensory areas. Here we report for the first time double sensations evoked by tactile stimuli delivered to the contralesional hypoesthesic hand in a patient with a lesion involving the hand representation in the primary somatosensory cortex. These double sensations were very precise and consistent over a 4-months period and were clustered on the contralesional scalp and bilaterally on the nape. The distribution of the referred sensations did not conform to any orderly topographic relation with the known somatosensory hand representation. Since in our patient the lesion left unaffected the nervous pathway from the skin to the thalamus, the selective cortical perturbation may have induced a thalamic reactivity eventually leading to the expression of latent thalamic inputs to intact cortical targets. The non-topographic distribution of the areas inducing double sensations is likely to reflect a noisy rearrangement process.

Anomalous double sensations after damage to the cortical somatosensory representation of the hand in humans / S. AGLIOTI; A. BELTRAMELLO; A. PERU; N. SMANIA; M. TINAZZI. - In: NEUROCASE. - ISSN 1355-4794. - STAMPA. - 5:(1999), pp. 285-292.

Anomalous double sensations after damage to the cortical somatosensory representation of the hand in humans.

PERU, ANDREA;
1999

Abstract

Hand amputees may report that a tactile stimulus delivered to the stump region or the face ipsilateral to the amputation induces the sensation of being touched on the phantom. Given the representational contiguity between hand and face, this phenomenon has been related to electrophysiologically demonstrated orderly remappings occurring in deafferented somatosensory areas. Here we report for the first time double sensations evoked by tactile stimuli delivered to the contralesional hypoesthesic hand in a patient with a lesion involving the hand representation in the primary somatosensory cortex. These double sensations were very precise and consistent over a 4-months period and were clustered on the contralesional scalp and bilaterally on the nape. The distribution of the referred sensations did not conform to any orderly topographic relation with the known somatosensory hand representation. Since in our patient the lesion left unaffected the nervous pathway from the skin to the thalamus, the selective cortical perturbation may have induced a thalamic reactivity eventually leading to the expression of latent thalamic inputs to intact cortical targets. The non-topographic distribution of the areas inducing double sensations is likely to reflect a noisy rearrangement process.
1999
5
285
292
S. AGLIOTI; A. BELTRAMELLO; A. PERU; N. SMANIA; M. TINAZZI
File in questo prodotto:
File Dimensione Formato  
Neurocase 1999.pdf

Accesso chiuso

Tipologia: Versione finale referata (Postprint, Accepted manuscript)
Licenza: Tutti i diritti riservati
Dimensione 1.49 MB
Formato Adobe PDF
1.49 MB Adobe PDF   Richiedi una copia

I documenti in FLORE sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificatore per citare o creare un link a questa risorsa: https://hdl.handle.net/2158/219817
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus ND
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? ND
social impact