身体表征的分离:二分解释模型及其证据

Dissociation of Body Representation:The Dyadic Taxonomy Model and Evidence

身体表征是一种内部结构,它具有追踪身体状态并对其进行编码的功能。这种结构可以对身体进行错误的表征,并可以从身体中分离出来。来自海豹肢症与躯体失认症等方面的病例,证实部分身体畸形与脑损伤患者的身体表征存在分离;来自橡胶手错觉与全身错觉的实验证据,验证了健康个体身体表征分离的事实。基于上述证据,以身体图式和身体意象为二分维度的模型解释了身体表征的分离。未来的研究可以从神经心理学实验和虚拟现实技术着手,对身体表征的分离进行深入探究。

Knowing ourselves and controlling ourselves are something that we take for granted.However,in this ordinary phenomenon,it contains complex psychological mechanisms.Body representation plays an important role in it.Body representation is considered to be the mapping of the body in the brain and it is a coherent mental representation constructed by multiple sensory inputs.The view that body representation is separable was first proposed by neuropathologists Head and Holmes in 1911.After that,body representation,as a multi-dimensional concept,has gained wide consensus.In the past ten years,when the body representation has received more and more attention,the body schema,body image,body structural description and body semantics have gradually entered people's field of vision.However,there is disagreement on the number and definitions of body representations.A dyadic taxonomy which is widely accepted in the current cognitive science suggests to distinguish between body schema and body image.Body schema consists of sensorimotor representations of the body that guide actions,and enables the body to unconsciously adjust the posture and movement.Thus,many meaningful parts of the world are integrated into our experience.Body image groups all the other representations about the body that are not used for action,whether they are perceptual,conceptual or emotional.It has been defined as a more stable and internal perceptual representation of the body.In order to find evidence supporting the dyadic taxonomy,we focused on patients with neurological disorders and healthy subjects involved in the rubber hand illusion experiment and its paradigm.For some patients with micromelia and brain-damage,such as phocomelia,and autotopagnosia,they could not correctly recognize themselves due to the dissociation of body representation.Although healthy individuals did not lose a certain part of the body representation,their perception of self was biased because of multisensory conflict,which was resulted in rubber hand illusion and fullbody illusion.We then explored the internal mechanism from the perspectives of consciousness and unconsciousness,top-down and bottom-up,which provided a strong basis for the validity of the dyadic taxonomy.Body schema was an unconscious,bottom-up and dynamic representation,relying on proprioceptive information and involved in enabling and monitoring motor actions.Body image was considered to be a more conscious,top-down,cognitive representation,mostly used to make perceptual judgements.In conclusion,we provide a lot of evidence for the rationality of the dyadic taxonomy.However,we also find that there are still many problems to be solved.First of all,the concept of body image is still controversial.Whether it can continue to separate is still unknown.Secondly,the internal separation basis of the dyadic taxonomy cannot completely separate the body schema from the body image.In other words,the body schema is closely related to the body image,and it is difficult to completely separate them.Furthermore,there are few empirical studies based on the dissociation of body representation.Therefore,future research needs to address the above problems,and sort out more systematic classification standards at the conceptual level to find a clearer boundary between the body schema and body image.In addition,virtual reality technology can be used for more in-depth research.