Bodily ownership modulation in defensive responses: Physiological evidence in brain-damaged patients with pathological embodiment of other's body parts

Do conscious beliefs about the body affect defensive mechanisms within the body? To answer this question we took advantage from a monothematic delusion of bodily ownership, in which brain-damaged patients misidentify alien limbs as their own. We investigated whether the delusional belief that an alien hand is their own hand modulates a subcortical defensive response, such as the hand-blink reflex. The blink, dramatically increases when the threated hand is inside the defensive peripersonal-space of the face. In our between-subjects design, including patients and controls, the threat was brought near the face either by the own hand or by another person’s hand. Our results show an ownership-dependent modulation of the defensive response. In controls, as well as in the patients’ intact-side, the response enhancement is significantly greater when the threat was brought near the face by the own than by the alien hand. Crucially, in the patients’ affected-side (where the pathological embodiment occurs), the alien (embodied) hand elicited a response enhancement comparable to that found when the threat is brought near the face by the real hand. These findings suggest the existence of a mutual interaction between our conscious beliefs about the body and the physiological mechanisms within the body

Long-term services for the care and rehabilitation of people with severe acquired brain injury: a multicentre, cross-sectional study of 536 Italian families

BACKGROUND: People with severe acquired brain injuries (ABIs) require complex, long-term multidisciplinary healthcare, and social welfare programmes, and their families experience social and emotional consequences that profoundly condition their quality of life.OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether the possibility of gaining access to local rehabilitation and other services positively influences not only the quality of life of the patients but also the quality of life of their families.METHODS: The sample consisted of 536 families of patients with severe ABIs. They were administered a specific 50-item questionnaire with a mix of multiple choice answers, dichotomous (yes/no) answers, or answers based on a Likert-type scale.RESULTS: The results suggest that the long-term services provided to patients are substantially satisfactory but the data concerning the patients' social and working reintegration are discomforting. Furthermore, the families experience profound social discomfort related to their economic, emotional and caregiving burden regardless of the number and quality of the rehabilitation services activated, or the amount of welfare support received.CONCLUSIONS: Post-severe ABI services provided at a local level should include not only long-term rehabilitative and social support for the patients, but also long-term social and psychological support for their families