Cognitive and bodily selves: how do they interact following brain lesion?

Dualism has long distinguished between the mental and the body experiences. Probing the structure and organisation of the self traditionally calls for a distinction between these two sides of the self coin. It is far beyond the scope of this chapter to address these philosophical issues, and our starting point will be the simple distinction between reflective processes involved in the elaboration of body image, self awareness and self-recognition (i.e. ‘the self’) and the sensori-motor dialogues involved in action control, reactions and automatisms (i.e. ‘the body’ schema). This oversimplification does not take into account the complex interactions taking place between these two levels of description, but our initial aim will be to distinguish between them, before addressing the question of their interactions. Cognitive and sensori-motor processes have frequently been distinguished (review: Rossetti and Revonsuo 2000), and it may be proposed that a similar dissociation can be put forward, a priori, between a central representation of self and a bodily representation corresponding to body schema (Figure 1)

L’hystérie : ne plus vouloir pouvoir, ne plus pouvoir vouloir

L’hystérie se définit comme un déficit fonctionnel sans cause organique. Par exemple, certains patients sont incapables de se mouvoir volontairement, comme s’ils étaient véritablement paralysés, sans que l’on puisse fournir une explication physiologique. À l’inverse, les patients souffrant d’anosognosie sont véritablement paralysés, mais affirment pouvoir bouger. Ces pathologies résultent toutes deux d’un trouble de la conscience de la capacité à agir : les uns croient qu’ils ne peuvent pas agir alors qu’ils le pourraient et les autres croient pouvoir agir alors qu’ils en sont incapables. Mais de quoi dépend cette forme spécifique de conscience ? En comparant ces deux syndromes miroirs, je chercherai à révéler les processus mis en jeu par la conscience de la capacité à agir et à jeter un jour nouveau sur l’hystérie. S’agit-il d’un trouble de la volonté, et si oui, à quel niveau se produit-il ? J’analyserai ainsi les relations respectives entre la conscience de la capacité d’agir et la conscience d’agir, et montrerai le rôle joué par l’image corporelle

A l'origine des grands animaux, un petit ver tout nu

Les premiers multicellulaires, marins et invértebrés, sont apparus avant le début du Cambrien, il y a 544 millions d'années. Quarante millions d'années plus tard, les branches principales du règne animal étaient probablement déjà présentes, à l’exception des espèces terrestres. Durant « l'explosion cambrienne » apparaissent done tous les plans de base des animaux actuels. Comment expliquer l'émergence de cette extraordinaire diversité? La clé du mystère se cache sans doute dans les processus génétiques qui contrôlent le développement embryonnaire

Merleau-Ponty on Embodied Subjectivity from the Perspective of Subject-Object Circularity

The phenomenological point of view of the body is usually appreciated for having introduced the notion of the ‘lived’ body. We cannot merely analyze and explain the body as one of the elements of the world of objects. We must also describe it, for example, as the center of our perspective on the world, the place where our sensing is ‘localized’, the agens which directly executes our intentions. However, in Husserl, the idea of the body as lived primarily complements his objectivism: the body (Leib) is an objective and mental reality, a ‘double unity’, as he writes. In contrast, Merleau-Ponty’s later considerations of the body in Phenomenology of Perception tend to the idea of a circular relationship between the objective and subjective dimensions of the body – between the objective and the lived. One of the means to overcome the idea of the body as a site of the correlation between two opposite and complementary realms is, for Merleau-Ponty, the philosophical interpretation of an early neurological notion of ‘body schema’. Body schema is neither an idea nor a physiological-physical fact, it is rather a practical diagram of our relationships with the world, an action-based norm in reference to which things make sense. In the recently published preparatory notes for his 1953 courses, Merleau-Ponty dedicates much effort to further developing the notion of body schema, and interprets fresh sources that he did not use in Phenomenology of Perception. Notably, he studies various possibilities of how this practical ‘diagram’ can be de-differentiated (pathology) or further refined (cognitive and cultural superstructures, symbolic systems), which shows the fundamentally dynamic unity of the body. This paper summarizes the basic elements of Merleau-Ponty’s 1953 renewed philosophical interpretation of the notion of body schema, while contrasting it to the more traditional understanding of the body in phenomenology and in recent philosophical texts dealing with body schema

Widening the body to rubber hands and tools: what's the difference?

The brain represents the body in different ways (e.g., perceptual, motor) for different purposes (recognising oneself, acting in space). Several concepts and even more numerous labels (e.g., body image, body schema) have historically been proposed to define these representations in operational terms. Recent evidence of embodiment of external objects has added complexity to an already quite intricate picture. In particular, because of their perceptual and motor effects, both rubber hands and tools can be conceived as embodied, that is, represented in the brain as if they were parts of one's own body. But are there any limits to what we can embody? What constraints lay upon embodiment? And are they similar both for motor embodiment (i.e. integration within the body schema) and for perceptual embodiment (i.e. integration within the body image)? Here, we consider the implications emerging from the different, and up-to-now relatively separate research domains of tool use and rubber hand illusion for understanding the rules of embodiment. In particular, we compare what the embodiment of tools and prostheses may or may not have in common. We conclude that in both cases, although for different reasons and with different constraints, embodiment is only partial

Sensuous intoxication:Learning from bodies in organisational ethnography

An increasing number of management articles have focused on embodied ethnography in terms of either understanding other bodies at work or how our own bodies as researchers inform knowledge. In advancing this latter approach, we argue for an embodiment that sensually intoxicates our bodies, enabling new forms of learning to emerge. To grow this understanding, we draw on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concept 'le schéma corporel', a shared physiognomy of the senses. This concept informs a corporeal methodology which details three organisational depictions that emerge from a season long immersion in a professional rugby team. We illustrate how the Will was corporeally apprenticed in this setting through an understanding of the body as situated, emotional and physical. The article concludes by suggesting it is the researcher's own body that is the site of learning, providing a sense to the reader of the pain, touch and sound of professional rugby

La validité et la fiabilité du test du jugement de la reconnaissance de la latéralité: une revue systématique

La reconnaissance de la latéralité est une capacité implicite de notre cerveau à différencier la partie du corps droite de la gauche. Elle est évaluée par le programme Recognise qui propose des images de divers membres orientés à différents degrés et dont le sujet doit indiquer la latéralité. Notre objectif est une revue de la littérature pour définir si ce test est valide et fiable.Laterality recognition is an implicit capability of our brain to differentiate between the left and right side of the body. It is evaluated by the Recognise program which offers a display of body part images oriented in various degrees. The subject has to indicate the laterality of the limb. The aim of our literature review is to establish if the test of laterality recognition is valid and reliable.Die Lateralitätserkennung ist eine implizite Fähigkeit unseres Gehirns, die linke von der rechten Körperhälfte zu unterscheiden. Sie wird durch das Programm Recognise bestimmt, das verschiedene Bilder von Gliedmassen in unterschiedlichen Stellungswinkeln zeigt. Der Teilnehmer soll die Lateralität der Gliedmassen erkennen. Das Ziel unserer Bachelorarbeit ist eine systematische Durchsicht der einschlägigen Fachliteratur, um zu bestimmen, ob der Lateralitätserkennungstest stichhaltig und verlässlich ist

« Que faisons-nous et à quoi ça sert? Image du corps et schéma corporel dans la méthode Feldenkrais »

International audienceThis research has begun to respond to fieldwork difficulties met in bringing somatic practices, particularly Feldenkrais, into the field of social work. The endogenous discourses produced by the Feldenkrais community to describe and analyse the practice proved to be counter‐productive to convince social work professionals of the relevance of Somatics to participate in the global support of people living in a cluster of social difficulty including health (chronic disease), ethnic and cultural differences (migration). The analysis of endogenous discourses has shown discrepancies within discourses themselves, and between discourse and practice. This article presents an alternative Feldenkrais description based on Gallagher's model of body image and body schema, and the relevance of such a model to the Feldenkrais method, but also to social work, as a model allowing describing the experience of social exclusion as a somatic experience