Abstract
The construction of a coherent representation of our body and the mapping of the space immediately surrounding it are of the highest ecological importance. This space has at least three specificities: it is a space where actions are planned in order to interact with our environment; it is a space that contributes to the experience of self and self-boundaries, through tactile processing and multisensory interactions; last, it is a space that contributes to the experience of body integrity against external events. In the last decades, numerous studies have been interested in peripersonal space (PPS), defined as the space directly surrounding us and which we can interact with (for reviews, see Cléry et al., 2015b; de Vignemont and Iannetti, 2015; di Pellegrino and Làdavas, 2015). These studies have contributed to the understanding of how this space is constructed, encoded and modulated. The majority of these studies focused on subparts of PPS (the hand, the face or the trunk) and very few of them investigated the interaction between PPS subparts. In the present review, we summarize the latest advances in this research and we discuss the new perspectives that are set forth for futures investigations on this topic. We describe the most recent methods used to estimate PPS boundaries by the means of dynamic stimuli. We then highlight how impact prediction and approaching stimuli modulate this space by social, emotional and action-related components involving principally a parieto-frontal network. In a next step, we review evidence that there is not a unique representation of PPS but at least three sub-sections (hand, face and trunk PPS). Last, we discuss how these subspaces interact, and we question whether and how bodily self-consciousness (BSC) is functionally and behaviorally linked to PPS.
Highlights
Reviewed by: Jean-Paul Noel, Vanderbilt University, United States Michela Bassolino, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
The peripersonal space (PPS) is subserved in the brain by specific neuronal mechanisms embedded in a well identified cortical network that processes visual or auditory information occurring in the space that directly surrounds us as well as the tactile information occurring on the body
While these studies point toward a functional convergence between PPS processing and multisensory convergence processes, very few of them have explicitly probed that these multisensory neurons actively integrate sensory information from different modalities (Avillac et al, 2007), and even fewer have explicitly probed a direct link between multisensory visuo-tactile or audio-tactile integration and PPS processing
Summary
UMR5229, Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod, CNRS-Université Claude Bernard Lyon I, Bron, France. Numerous studies have been interested in peripersonal space (PPS), defined as the space directly surrounding us and which we can interact with (for reviews, see Cléry et al, 2015b; de Vignemont and Iannetti, 2015; di Pellegrino and Làdavas, 2015). These studies have contributed to the understanding of how this space is constructed, encoded and modulated. The majority of these studies focused on subparts of PPS (the hand, the face or the trunk) and very few of them investigated the interaction between PPS subparts.
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