2025/01/10 by Gerardo Salvato, Paul M. Jenkinson, Manuela Sellitto +9 · 1 voice · 2 citations
Psychology · Medicine · Computer Science · #Action Observation and Synchronization #Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments #Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41467-025-55829-7
Thermosensory signals may contribute to the sense of body ownership, but their role remains highly debated. We test this assumption within the framework of pathological body ownership, hypothesising that skin temperature and thermoception differ between right-hemisphere stroke patients with and without Disturbed Sensation of Ownership (DSO) for the contralesional plegic upper limb. Patients with DSO exhibit lower basal hand temperatures bilaterally and impaired perception of cold and warm stimuli. Lesion mapping reveals associations in the right Rolandic Operculum and Insula, with these regions linked to lower skin temperature located posterior to those associated with thermoception deficits. Disconnections in bilateral parietal regions are associated with lower hand temperature, while disconnections in a right-lateralized thalamus-parietal hub correlate with thermoception deficits. We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings in the context of the ongoing debate on the role of homeostatic signals in shaping a coherent sense of body ownership. Salvato et al. reveal that thermosensory signals may play a role in bodily self-awareness. Their study on right-brain stroke patients highlights behavioural and neural contribution of temperature and thermoception to disorders of body ownership.