Enlarged representation of peripersonal space in pregnancy

Flavia Cardini,Victoria Gooch,Jane Elizabeth Aspell,Natalie Fatemi-Ghomi,Katarzyna Gajewska-Knapik

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-45224-w

Flavia Cardini, Victoria Gooch + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-45224-w

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Abstract

Our ability to maintain a coherent bodily self despite continuous changes within and outside our body relies on the highly flexible multisensory representation of the body, and of the space surrounding it: the peripersonal space (PPS). The aim of our study was to investigate whether during pregnancy - when extremely rapid changes in body size and shape occur - a likewise rapid plastic reorganization of the neural representation of the PPS occurs. We used an audio-tactile integration task to measure the PPS boundary at different stages of pregnancy. We found that in the second trimester of pregnancy and postpartum women did not show differences in their PPS size as compared to the control group (non-pregnant women). However, in the third trimester the PPS was larger than the controls’ PPS and the shift between representation of near and far space was more gradual. We therefore conclude that during pregnancy the brain adapts to the sudden bodily changes, by expanding the representation of the space around the body. This may represent a mechanism to protect the vulnerable abdomen from injury from surrounding objects.

Highlights

Pregnancy is an exceptional and temporary condition in a woman’s life, when rapid changes occur in the body - both internally and externally
A mixed model analysis in SPSS was run with the maximum likelihood (ML) method used for parameters estimate
The aim of the present study was to investigate whether changes in the representation of peripersonal space occur during pregnancy

Summary

Introduction

Pregnancy is an exceptional and temporary condition in a woman’s life, when rapid changes occur in the body - both internally and externally. Experimental evidence has demonstrated an expansion of the PPS representation after tool use: when an individual acts upon far space with a tool, their brain’s representation of near and far space changes, with the far space being treated as near space. Experimental evidence has demonstrated an expansion of the PPS representation after tool use: when an individual acts upon far space with a tool, their brain’s representation of near and far space changes, with the far space being treated as near space14–16 This effect was first described in www.nature.com/scientificreports/. Longo and Lourenco conducted an experiment highly relevant to the current study It aimed to test whether the size of the near space changes with the size of the body, in particular with the key body part used to navigate within the near space, i.e. the arm. They found that participants with longer arms showed a larger near space

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