Bottini G, Paulesu E, Sterzi R, Warburton E, Wise R J, Vallar G, Frackowiak R S, Frith C D
Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology, Institute of Neurology, Hammersmith Hospital, London, UK.
Nature. 1995 Aug 31;376(6543):778-81. doi: 10.1038/376778a0.
Lack of awareness of touch associated with brain damage may transiently recover after stimulation of the vestibular system. We used positron emission tomographic regional cerebral blood flow measurements to study the neurophysiological effect of vestibular stimulation on touch imperception in a subject with a right brain lesion. We tested the hypothesis that the vestibular system aids conscious tactile perception by introducing a bias in the neural system subserving body representation. We show that in normal subjects touch and vestibular signals share projections to the putamen, insula, somatosensory area II, premotor cortex and supramarginal gyrus. In our patient a subset of these regions (right putamen and insula) was spared by the lesion and was maximally active when touch and vestibular stimulations were combined. These results support the suggestion that our phenomenological consciousness is associated with activation in circumscribed brain areas specific to the particular sensation of which we are aware.
与脑损伤相关的触觉感知缺失在前庭系统受到刺激后可能会短暂恢复。我们使用正电子发射断层扫描区域脑血流测量技术，研究了前庭刺激对一名右脑损伤患者触觉失认的神经生理效应。我们检验了这样一个假设，即前庭系统通过在负责身体表征的神经系统中引入偏差来辅助有意识的触觉感知。我们发现，在正常受试者中，触觉和前庭信号共享投射到壳核、脑岛、体感二区、运动前皮质和缘上回。在我们的患者中，这些区域的一个子集（右侧壳核和脑岛）未受损伤，并且在触觉和前庭刺激同时进行时最为活跃。这些结果支持了这样一种观点，即我们的现象学意识与特定于我们所意识到的特定感觉的特定脑区的激活有关。
