Hach Sylvia, Schütz-Bosbach Simone
School of Psychology, The University of Auckland Auckland, New Zealand.
Max-Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences Leipzig, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2014 Feb 19;5:123. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00123. eCollection 2014.
Beside language, space is to date the most widely recognized lateralized systems. For example, it has been shown that even mental representations of space and the spatial representation of abstract concepts display lateralized characteristics. For the most part, this body of literature describes space as distal or something outside of the observer or actor. What has been strangely absent in the literature on the whole and specifically in the spatial literature until recently is the most proximal space imaginable - the body. In this review, we will summarize three strands of literature showing laterality in body representations. First, evidence of hemispheric asymmetries in body space in health and, second in body space in disease will be examined. Third, studies pointing to differential contributions of the right and left hemisphere to illusory body (space) will be summarized. Together these studies show hemispheric asymmetries to be evident in body representations at the level of simple somatosensory and proprioceptive representations. We propose a novel working hypothesis, whereby neural systems dedicated to processing action-oriented information about one's own body space may ontogenetically serve as a template for the perception of the external world.
除了语言，空间是迄今为止最广为人知的具有偏侧化的系统。例如，研究表明，即使是空间的心理表征以及抽象概念的空间表征也呈现出偏侧化特征。在很大程度上，这一系列文献将空间描述为远端的，或者是观察者或行动者之外的事物。直到最近，在关于整体的文献中，尤其是在空间文献中，奇怪地缺失的是可以想象到的最接近的空间——身体。在这篇综述中，我们将总结三类显示身体表征存在偏侧化的文献。首先，将研究健康状态下身体空间半球不对称的证据，其次是疾病状态下身体空间半球不对称的证据。第三，将总结指出左右半球对虚幻身体（空间）有不同贡献的研究。这些研究共同表明，半球不对称在简单体感和本体感觉表征层面的身体表征中很明显。我们提出一个新的工作假设，即专门用于处理关于自身身体空间的面向行动信息的神经系统，在个体发育过程中可能作为对外界感知的模板。
