Department of Psychology, School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Earley Gate, Reading, RG6 6BE, UK.
Exp Brain Res. 2012 Apr;218(2):273-82. doi: 10.1007/s00221-012-3042-7. Epub 2012 Mar 6.
The fascinating idea that tools become extensions of our body appears in artistic, literary, philosophical, and scientific works alike. In the last 15 years, this idea has been reframed into several related hypotheses, one of which states that tool use extends the neural representation of the multisensory space immediately surrounding the hands (variously termed peripersonal space, peri-hand space, peri-cutaneous space, action space, or near space). This and related hypotheses have been tested extensively in the cognitive neurosciences, with evidence from molecular, neurophysiological, neuroimaging, neuropsychological, and behavioural fields. Here, I briefly review the evidence for and against the hypothesis that tool use extends a neural representation of the space surrounding the hand, concentrating on neurophysiological, neuropsychological, and behavioural evidence. I then provide a re-analysis of data from six published and one unpublished experiments using the crossmodal congruency task to test this hypothesis. While the re-analysis broadly confirms the previously reported finding that tool use does not literally extend peripersonal space, the overall effect sizes are small and statistical power is low. I conclude by questioning whether the crossmodal congruency task can indeed be used to test the hypothesis that tool use modifies peripersonal space.
工具成为身体延伸的迷人观点在艺术、文学、哲学和科学作品中都有出现。在过去的 15 年里，这个观点被重新表述为几个相关的假设，其中之一表明，工具的使用扩展了手部周围多感官空间的神经表示（各种术语包括近体空间、手周空间、近皮空间、动作空间或近空间）。这些和相关的假设在认知神经科学中得到了广泛的检验，从分子、神经生理学、神经影像学、神经心理学和行为学等领域都有证据支持。在这里，我简要回顾了支持和反对工具使用扩展手部周围空间的神经表示的假设的证据，重点关注神经生理学、神经心理学和行为学证据。然后，我对使用跨模态一致性任务的六个已发表和一个未发表实验的数据进行了重新分析，以检验这一假设。虽然重新分析大致证实了之前报告的工具使用并没有从字面上扩展近体空间的发现，但总体效应大小较小，统计效力较低。最后，我质疑跨模态一致性任务是否真的可以用来检验工具使用改变近体空间的假设。
