Submitted on September 24, 2003
Accepted on December 5, 2003
Body scheme gates visual processing
Christian Dohle1, Raimund Kleiser2*, Ruediger J. Seitz3, and Hans-Joachim Freund2
1 Department of Neurology, University Hospital Duesseldorf, Duesseldorf, Germany; Godeshoehe Neurological Rehabilitation Centre, Bonn, Germany
2 Department of Neurology, University Hospital Duesseldorf, Duesseldorf, Germany
3 Department of Neurology, University Hospital Duesseldorf, Duesseldorf, Germany; Heinrich-Heine-University, Biomedical Research Centre, Duesseldorf, Germany
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: kleiser{at}uni-duesseldorf.de.
We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore how guidance of motor acts is influenced by the visually perceived body scheme. We found that when subjects view their hand as their opposite hand, i.e. the right hand is seen as the left hand and vice versa, activation in the visual cortex was lateralized opposite to the seen hand. This demonstrates for the first time that our body scheme to which vision relates our environment is already represented at the level of visual cortex.
