Enlarged representation of peripersonal space in pregnancy
2019
Our ability to maintain a coherent bodily self despite continuous changes within and outside our body
relies on the highly flexible multisensory representation of the body, and of the space surrounding it:
the peripersonal space (PPS). The aim of our study was to investigate whether during pregnancy - when
extremely rapid changes in body size and shape occur - a likewise rapid plastic reorganization of the
neural representation of the PPS occurs. We used an audio-tactile integration task to measure the
PPS boundary at different stages of pregnancy. We found that in the second trimester of pregnancy
and postpartum women did not show differences in their PPS size as compared to the control group
(non-pregnant women). However, in the third trimester the PPS was larger than the controls’ PPS and
the shift between representation of near and far space was more gradual. We therefore conclude that
during pregnancy the brain adapts to the sudden bodily changes, by expanding the representation of
the space around the body. This may represent a mechanism to protect the vulnerable abdomen from
injury from surrounding objects.
Keywords:
- Correction
- Source
- Cite
- Save
- Machine Reading By IdeaReader
45
References
7
Citations
NaN
KQI