OBSERVATION Neural Mechanisms of Embodiment Asomatognosia Due to Premotor Cortex Damage Shahar Arzy, MD; Leila S. Overney, PhD; Theodor Landis, MD; Olaf Blanke, MD, PhD Background: Patients with asomatognosia generally de- and motor cortices. The patient’s pathological embodi- scribe parts of their body as missing or disappeared from cor- ment for her left arm was associated with mild left poreal awareness. This disturbance is generally attributed somatosensory loss, mild frontal dysfunction, and a to damage in the right posterior parietal cortex. However, behavioral deficit in the mental imagery of human recent neuroimaging and electrophysiological studies sug- arms. gest that corporeal awareness and embodiment of body parts areinsteadlinkedtothepremotorcortexofbothhemispheres. Conclusion: Asomatognosia may also be associated with damage to the right premotor cortex. Patient: We describe a patient with asomatognosia of her left arm due to damage in the right premotor Arch Neurol. 2006;63:1022-1025 SOMATOGNOSIA IS DEFINED arm or hand. After several minutes, the pa- as a patient’s feeling that tient experienced progressive restoration of parts of his or her body are her left hand and arm starting laterally, then “missing” or have disap- medially (Figure 1C), while leaving 2 holes peared from corporeal in the middle of her hand (Figure 1D). Later awareness.A1 Evidence from patients with fo- the 2 holes fused (Figure 1E) until the arm cal brain damage suggests that asomatog- was complete again (Figure 1F), and she was nosia is linked to posterior parietal le- able to move it some minutes later. No other sions, especially of the right hemisphere, bodypartsorelementsofextrapersonalspace and generally affects the contralesional were experienced as modified. body.1-8 Although experimental findings in The neurological examination showed patients with asomatognosia are rare, these moderate left-sided hypoesthesia of the arm studies showed that asomatognosia may be and lower face (light touch and pinprick). modified by touching the missing body part Positionsensewasnormal.Therewasnoleft- or by looking at it, suggesting multisen- sidedhemianopiaorparesis,andmuscleten- sory mechanisms in awareness and em- don reflexes were normal. Finger tapping, 1,9 bodiment of body parts. index-thumb opposition, diadochokinesis, Herein we describe a patient with aso- writing, copying, and drawing were normal. matognosia of her left arm due to 2 small Results of the neuropsychological examina- lesions in the right premotor cortex (PMC) tion demonstrated a mild executive deficit and the motor cortex. We discuss asoma- in the Lurias alternating sequences test and tognosia with respect to involved brain verbal semantic fluency (9.7 words/min; z functions and regions. score, −1.50). No deficits were detected in language, calculation, or praxis. Results of REPORT OF A CASE the Benton Facial Recognition Test and Ben- ton Judgment of Line Orientation Test, the A 51-year-old, right-handed woman with no Culvertest,10 andtheVisualObjectandSpace neurological or psychiatric antecedents de- Perception Battery were normal. There were scribedthefollowingexperiencewithrespect no signs of visuospatial neglect, unimodal Author Affiliations: Laboratory to her left arm. Sitting in front of her com- extinction (visual, tactile, or auditory), of Cognitive Neuroscience, puter, she unexpectedly felt dizzy and felt bimodal extinction (tactile-visual), or Brain-Mind Institute, Ecole that parts of her left arm (Figure 1A) had allesthesia.11-13 There was no finger agnosia, Polytechnique Fe´de´rale de disappeared (Figure 1B). Much to her sur- astereognosia,agraphesthesia,ortopograph- Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland (Drs Arzy, Overney, prise she could see the table on which she agnosia and no deficit in right-left discrimi- and Blanke); and Department of had rested her left arm as if she could see the nation. Findings of computed tomography Neurology, University Hospital, table through the arm, and saw her left arm performed at admission were normal. Mag- Geneva, Switzerland (Drs Arzy, only above her elbow, with a clear-cut bor- netic resonance imaging 12 days after lesion Landis, and Blanke). der (Figure 1B). She could not move her left onset showed 2 small ischemic lesions in the (REPRINTED) ARCH NEUROL / VOL 63, JULY 2006 WWW.ARCHNEUROL.COM 1022 Downloaded from www.archneurol.com on September 15, 2009 ©2006 American Medical Association. All rights reserved. A B C D E F Figure 1. Illustrations drawn by the patient describing asomatognosia. A, Normal left arm; B, “disappeared” left arm; C, “restored” left arm beginning laterally; D, “holes” in the left hand; E, fusion of 2 holes; and F, full restoration. PMC and the primary motor cortex (Figure 2) of cardiac milliseconds; t7=−1.6; P=.14) (Figure 3F). The same differ- embolic origin. ence was found in the error rates. The patient made signifi- To further explore the functional mechanisms of asoma- cantly more errors for arms (mean±SD, 16.5%±3.0%) than Ͻ tognosia and body-part processing, we tested the patient’s didcontrolsubjects(mean±SD,6.3%±1.1%;t7=3.2;P .01), capacity to mentally imagine human body parts. For this, but she had the same number of errors for external objects we compared the patient’s performance in a mental rotation (mean±SD, 5.3%±2.6%; controls, 8.0%±3.9%; t7=−0.58; task involving body parts (arms) with performance using P=.57). In addition, the patient showed a global mental ro- noncorporeal external objects.12 Both types of stimuli were tation function for the external objects (reaction times in- presented in 7 different angles (0°-180°) and were in a nor- creasing linearly with the angle of rotation) but not for the mal view or an inverse view (for body parts, the contralat- arms (Figure 3E-F). eral hand was attached to the ipsilateral arm; alphanumeric characters were presented in a mirror-reversed view) COMMENT (Figure 3A-D). The patient and 7 age-matched healthy con- trol subjects had to determine as quickly as possible whether Patients with asomatognosia may describe that “the left the stimulus was the correct one or the inverse one.12 The arm and leg seem to be ‘missing’” or that the affected body patient had significantly longer reaction times for the arms part seems “to disappear, or to fall out of corporeal aware- (mean±SD, 1795±121 milliseconds) than control subjects ness.”1(p237-238) Asomatognosia is generally attributed to Ͻ (mean±SD, 907±70 milliseconds; t7=6.3; P .001) posterior parietal lesions, especially of the right hemi- (Figure 3E), but she had similar reaction times for external sphere1,7,8 Our patient’s symptoms, affected body side, and objects (mean±SD, 505±80 milliseconds; controls, 698±93 hemisphere lesions are concordant with previous cases (REPRINTED) ARCH NEUROL / VOL 63, JULY 2006 WWW.ARCHNEUROL.COM 1023 Downloaded from www.archneurol.com on September 15, 2009 ©2006 American Medical Association. All rights reserved. A B ii i i ii Figure 2. Lesion location. A, Three-dimensional reconstruction of a T1-weighted magnetic resonance image. The 2 small lesions confined to the right premotor cortex (i) and motor cortex (ii) are projected on the cortical surface. B, Magnetic resonance image (T1-weighted, with gadolinium enhancement; sagittal section) showing the 2 hypointense small ischemic lesions. A B C D Normal View Inverse View Normal View Inverse View E F 3000 1500 Patient, Normal View Patient, Inverse View Controls, Normal View Controls, Inverse View 2000 1000 RT, ms RT, ms RT, 1000 500 0 0 0603090 120 150 180 0603090 120 150 180 Rotation Angle, Degrees Rotation Angle, Degrees Figure 3. Behavioral findings. A-D, Illustration of the stimuli used including body parts (arms) (A and B) and external objects (letters) (C and D) that were in a normal view (A and C) or in an inverse view (B and D). The stimuli were presented in 7 different angles. Patient and control subjects had to determine as quickly as possible whether the stimulus was the correct one or the mirror-reversed one. E and F, Mean reaction times as a function of orientation are plotted separately for the patient (black) and control subjects (open) in normal and inverse view for body parts (E) and external objects (F). RT indicates reaction time. (REPRINTED) ARCH NEUROL / VOL 63, JULY 2006 WWW.ARCHNEUROL.COM 1024 Downloaded from www.archneurol.com on September 15, 2009 ©2006 American Medical Association. All rights reserved. of asomatognosia. We report the following novel obser- that share visual and tactile receptive fields, or that the PMC vations: (1) the predominantly visual character in our pa- receives input from parietal regions integrating visual, tac- tient, (2) the associated behavioral deficit, and (3) the tile, and proprioceptive information.20,21 restricted lesions to the right motor cortex and PMC. Based on our clinical, neuropsychological, and neu- These observations are discussed with respect to the mul- roimaging evidence, we conclude that the posterior pa- tisensory coding of body parts and higher-level aspects rietal cortex and PMC are involved in the coding of em- of one’s own body perception and embodiment. bodiment. Given that the underlying neurons share many The importance of vision of one’s own body for so- functional characteristics, it is plausible that interfer- matosensory perception was investigated by Tipper et al,14 ence with either area, but especially in the right hemi- who showed that visual inspection of a body part, inde- sphere, may lead to pathological forms of embodiment. pendent of proprioceptive orienting, enhances the detec- tion of somatosensory stimuli. Multimodal visuotactile ex- Accepted for Publication: February 10, 2006. 15 tinction and processing also illustrate the importance of Correspondence: Olaf Blanke, MD, PhD, Laboratory of visual and somatosensory modalities in one’s own body Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain-Mind Institute, Ecole Poly- 1,11,13 perception, as do reports of patients with asomatog- technique Fe´de´rale de Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Swit- nosia whose experiences of missing body parts can be cor- zerland ([email protected]).