Angelo Maravita - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Angelo Maravita

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-ipe-10.1177_2041669520944425 for See What You Feel: A Crossmodal ... more Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-ipe-10.1177_2041669520944425 for See What You Feel: A Crossmodal Tool for Measuring Haptic Size Illusions by Olga Daneyko, Angelo Maravita and Daniele Zavagno in i-Perception

i-Perception, 2020

The purpose of this research is to present the employment of a simple-to-use crossmodal method fo... more The purpose of this research is to present the employment of a simple-to-use crossmodal method for measuring haptic size illusions. The method, that we call See what you feel, was tested by employing Uznadze’s classic haptic aftereffect in which two spheres physically identical (test spheres) appear different in size after that the hands holding them underwent an adaptation session with other two spheres (adapting spheres), one bigger and the other smaller than the two test spheres. To measure the entity of the illusion, a three-dimensional visual scale was created and participants were asked to find on it the spheres that corresponded in size to the spheres they were holding in their hands out of sight. The method, tested on 160 right-handed participants, is robust and easily understood by participants.

Current Biology, 2003

There has been a recent and dramatic growth of interest in the psychological and neural mechanism... more There has been a recent and dramatic growth of interest in the psychological and neural mechanisms of multisensory integration between different sensory modalities. Much of this recent research has focused specifically on how multisensory representations of body parts and of the 'peripersonal' space immediately around them, are constructed. Research has also focused on how this may lead to multisensorially determined perceptions of body parts, to action execution, and even to attributions of agency and self-ownership for the body parts in question. Converging evidence from animal and human studies suggests that the primate brain constructs various body-part-centred representations of space, based on the integration of visual, tactile and proprioceptive information. These representations can plastically change following active tool-use that extends reachable space and also modifies the representation of peripersonal space. These new results indicate that a modern cognitive neuroscience approach to the classical concept of the 'body schema' may now be within reach.

Scientific Reports, 2021

The Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) opened the investigation of the sense of body ownership in healthy... more The Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) opened the investigation of the sense of body ownership in healthy people. By putting in slight contrast vision touch and proprioception, healthy people embody a fake hand in one's body representation. The easiness of the procedure, typically measured with a set of questions that capture the subjective experience, favoured its blooming. However, validation studies of embodiment questionnaires are lacking, and the individual differences that contribute to the embodiment received little attention. In our study, 298 participants underwent an RHI procedure following both synchronous and asynchronous (control) visuo-tactile stimulations. The study had multiple aims: (a) to explore the psychometric structure of a 27-items questionnaire largely used in the literature; (b) to build a psychometrically efficient scale to measure embodiment-related phenomena; (c) to explore whether and how individual differences (empathy, self-esteem and mindfulness) are asso...

Brain Sciences, 2021

Slow, gentle stimulation of hairy skin is generally accompanied by hedonic sensations. This pheno... more Slow, gentle stimulation of hairy skin is generally accompanied by hedonic sensations. This phenomenon, also known as (positive) affective touch, is likely to be the basis of affiliative interactions with conspecifics by promoting inter-individual bindings. Previous studies on healthy humans have demonstrated that affective touch can remarkably impact behavior. For instance, by administering the Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) paradigm, the embodiment of a fake hand enhances after a slow, affective touch compared to a fast, neutral touch. However, results coming from this area are not univocal. In addition, there are no clues in the existing literature on the relationship between affective touch and the space around our body. To overcome these lacks, we carried out two separate experiments where participants underwent a RHI paradigm (Experiment 1) and a Visuo-Tactile Interaction task (Experiment 2), designed to tap into body representation and peripersonal space processing, respectively....

Schizophrenia Bulletin, 2019

The observation that people with schizophrenia misattribute the source of their own actions has l... more The observation that people with schizophrenia misattribute the source of their own actions has led to the hypothesis that they suffer from altered sensorimotor processes underlying sense of agency. Furthermore, rubber hand studies suggest an abnormal experience of embodiment in schizophrenia. However, this latter finding is based on a procedure that elicits ownership sensations for a fake hand by visuo-tactile stimulation, leaving the agency subcomponent of embodiment relatively untouched. By using a visuo-motor version of the embodiment illusion able to actively elicit also sense of agency for an alien hand, we tested whether the putative sensorimotor deficits are also involved in altering embodiment sensations in schizophrenia. Subjective (questionnaire) and perceptual (forearm bisection performance) indexes of the embodiment illusion were collected. Differently from controls, both the explicit agency component and the implicit body metrics update were not modulated by the extent of visuo-motor congruency in participants with schizophrenia. We conclude that motor prediction and/or temporal binding window impairments may alter the feeling of embodiment and body representation in schizophrenia.

Experimental Brain Research, 2018

Morphology and functional aspects of the tool have been proposed to be critical factors modulatin... more Morphology and functional aspects of the tool have been proposed to be critical factors modulating tooluse induced plasticity. However how these aspects contribute in changing body representation is underinvestigated. In the arm bisection task participants have to estimate the length of their own arm by indicating its midpoint, a paradigm used to investigate the representation of metric properties of the body. We employed this paradigm to investigate the impact of different actions onto tool embodiment. Our findings suggest that a training requiring actions mostly with proximal (shoulder) or distal (wrist) parts induces a different shift in the perceived arm midpoint. This effect is independent from, but enhanced by, the use of the tool during the training and it is in part influenced by specific demands of the task. These results suggest that specific motor patterns required by the training can induce different changes of body representation, calling for rethinking the concept of tool embodiment, which would be characterized not simply by the morphology of the tools, but also by the actions required for their specific use.

Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2017

The brain integrates multisensory inputs coming from the body (i.e., proprioception, tactile sens... more The brain integrates multisensory inputs coming from the body (i.e., proprioception, tactile sensations) and the world that surrounds it (e.g., visual information). In this way, it is possible to build supra-modal and coherent mental representations of our own body, in order to process sensory events and to plan movements and actions in space. Post-stroke acquired motor deficits affect the ability to move body parts and to interact with objects. This may, in turn, impair the brain representation of the affected body part, resulting in a further increase of disability and motor impairment. To the aim of improving any putative derangements of body representation induced by the motor deficit, here we used the Mirror Box (MB). MB is a rehabilitative tool aimed at restoring several pathological conditions where body representation is affected, including post-stroke motor impairments. In this setting, observing the reflection of the intact limb in the mirror, while the affected one is hid...

Emotion, 2017

The prompt recognition of pleasant and unpleasant odors is a crucial regulatory and adaptive need... more The prompt recognition of pleasant and unpleasant odors is a crucial regulatory and adaptive need of humans. Reactive answers to unpleasant odors ensure survival in many threatening situations. Notably, although humans typically react to certain odors by modulating their distance from the olfactory source, the effect of odor pleasantness over the orienting of visuospatial attention is still unknown. To address this issue, we first trained participants to associate visual shapes with pleasant and unpleasant odors, and then we assessed the impact of this association on a visuospatial task. Results showed that the use of trained shapes as flankers modulates performance in a line bisection task. Specifically, it was found that the estimated midpoint was shifted away from the visual shape associated with the unpleasant odor, whereas it was moved towards the shape associated with the pleasant odor. This finding demonstrates that odor pleasantness selectively shifts human attention in the surrounding space.

Cognition, Aug 1, 2017

The representation of the body in the brain is constantly updated to allow optimal sensorimotor i... more The representation of the body in the brain is constantly updated to allow optimal sensorimotor interactions with the external world. In addition to dynamic features, body representation holds stable features that are still largely unknown. In the present work we explored the hypothesis that body parts have preferential associations with relative spatial locations. Specifically, in three experiments, we found consistent preferential associations between the index finger and the top position, and between the thumb and the bottom position. This association was found in a tactile sensory discrimination task, which was conducted both with and without vision, as well as at the implicit conceptual association level. These findings show that body parts and spatial locations are stably associated. Therefore, not only are body segments dynamically mapped in space for perception and action, but they also hold intrinsic spatial information that contributes to somatosensory spatial processing.

Experimental Brain Research, 2016

modified posture and in the presence of response conflict. Overall, this study informs the long-s... more modified posture and in the presence of response conflict. Overall, this study informs the long-standing debate about mechanisms underlying the CCE by revealing that the visuo-tactile interference in this task is primarily due to the competition between opposite response tendencies, with an additional contribution of multisensory integration and hand-mediated attentional binding.

Journal of Neuropsychology, 2015

The study assessed whether the auditory reference provided by a music scale could improve spatial... more The study assessed whether the auditory reference provided by a music scale could improve spatial exploration of a standard musical instrument keyboard in right-braindamaged patients with left spatial neglect. As performing music scales involves the production of predictable successive pitches, the expectation of the subsequent note may facilitate patients to explore a larger extension of space in the left affected side, during the production of music scales from right to left. Eleven right-brain-damaged stroke patients with left spatial neglect, 12 patients without neglect, and 12 age-matched healthy participants played descending scales on a music keyboard. In a counterbalanced design, the participants' exploratory performance was assessed while producing scales in three feedback conditions: With congruent sound, no-sound, or random sound feedback provided by the keyboard. The number of keys played and the timing of key press were recorded. Spatial exploration by patients with left neglect was superior with congruent sound feedback, compared to both Silence and Random sound conditions. Both the congruent and incongruent sound conditions were associated with a greater deceleration in all groups. The frame provided by the music scale improves exploration of the left side of space, contralateral to the right hemisphere, damaged in patients with left neglect. Performing a scale with congruent sounds may trigger at some extent preserved auditory and spatial multisensory representations of successive sounds, thus influencing the time course of space scanning, and ultimately resulting in a more extensive spatial exploration. These findings offer new perspectives also for the rehabilitation of the disorder. Patients suffering from unilateral spatial neglect fail to report, respond to, and orient towards stimuli and events occurring in the side of space contralateral to the damaged cerebral hemisphere (contralesional), and to explore that side of space. Spatial neglect is

In 1949 the Georgian psychologist Uznadze described a simultaneous haptic size contrast illusion ... more In 1949 the Georgian psychologist Uznadze described a simultaneous haptic size contrast illusion that occurs after adapting, out of vision, one hand to a small sphere and the other to a large one. After the adaptation process (10-15 simultaneous exposures), participants are suddenly exposed to two spheres equal in size and weight, but the impression is that the sphere held by the hand adapted to the large sphere is much smaller than the other one. Here we experimentally sought for the mechanisms underpinning the illusion. One experiment tested the possibility of measuring the illusion’s magnitude with a matching method in which right-handed participants were asked to indicate the size of each hand-held sphere on a 12 step visual scale made of spheres painted matt black. Variables were: (a, within) size of the adapting spheres; (b, between) evaluation direction (right-left, left-right); (c, between) position of the small adapting sphere (right, left). Only variables a and b produced ...

Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2012

The representation of body parts holds a special status in the brain, due to their prototypical s... more The representation of body parts holds a special status in the brain, due to their prototypical shape and the contribution of multisensory (visual and somatosensory-proprioceptive) information. In a previous study (Sposito et al., 2010), we showed that patients with left unilateral spatial neglect exhibit a rightward bias in setting the midpoint of their left forearm, which becomes larger when bisecting a cylindrical object comparable in size. This body part advantage, found also in control participants, suggests partly different processes for computing the extent of body parts and objects. In this study we tested 16 right-brain-damaged patients, and 10 unimpaired participants, on a manual bisection task of their own (real) left forearm, or a size-matched fake forearm. We then explored the effects of adaptation to rightward displacing prism exposure, which brings about leftward aftereffects. We found that all participants showed prism adaptation (PA) and aftereffects, with right-bra...

Front. Syst. Neurosci., 2014

Neuropsychologia, 2015

The representation of one's own body sets the border of the self, but also shapes the space where... more The representation of one's own body sets the border of the self, but also shapes the space where we interact with external objects. Under particular conditions, such as in the rubber hand illusion external objects can be incorporated in one's own body representation, following congruent visuo-tactile stroking of one's own and a fake hand. This procedure induces an illusory sense of ownership for the fake hand and a shift of proprioceptive localization of the own hand towards the fake hand. Here we investigated whether pure visuo-motor, instead of visuo-tactile, congruency between one's own hand and a detached myoelectric-controlled robotic hand can induce similar embodiment effects. We found a shift of proprioceptive hand localization toward the robot hand, only following synchronized real hand/robot hand movements. Notably, no modulation was found of the sense of ownership following either synchronous or asynchronous-movement training. Our findings suggest that visuo-motor synchrony can drive the localization of one's own body parts in space, even when somatosensory input is kept constant and the experience of body ownership is maintained.