Academic literature on the topic 'Bodily-spatial representation'

Along with deficits in spatial cognition, a decline in body-related information is observed in aging and is thought to contribute to impairments in navigation, memory, and space perception. According to the embodied cognition theories, bodily and environmental information play a crucial role in defining cognitive representations. Thanks to the possibility to involve body-related information, manipulate environmental stimuli, and add multisensory cues, virtual reality is one of the best candidates for spatial memory rehabilitation in aging for its embodied potential. However, current virtual neurorehabilitation solutions for aging and neurodegenerative diseases are in their infancy. Here, we discuss three concepts that could be used to improve embodied representations of the space with virtual reality. The virtual bodily representation is the combination of idiothetic information involved during virtual navigation thanks to input/output devices; the spatial affordances are environmental or symbolic elements used by the individual to act in the virtual environment; finally, the virtual enactment effect is the enhancement on spatial memory provided by actively (cognitively and/or bodily) interacting with the virtual space and its elements. Theoretical and empirical findings will be presented to propose innovative rehabilitative solutions in aging for spatial memory and navigation.

AbstractThe model presented in the target article includes feature processing and higher representations. I argue, based on neuropsychological evidence, that spatial representations are also involved in perceptual awareness of somatosensory events. Second, there is an asymmetry, with a right-hemisphere–based bilateral representation of the body. Third, the specific aspect of bodily awareness concerning motor function monitoring involves a network that includes the premotor cortex.

Hemispatial neglect in imagery implies a spatially organised representation. Reaction times in memory for arrays of locations from shifted viewpoints indicate processes analogous to actual bodily movement through space. Behavioral data indicate a privileged role for this process in memory. A proposed spatial mechanism makes contact with direct recordings of the representations of location and orientation in the mammalian brain.

AbstractThis article proposes that the representation of concepts in infancy is in the form of spatial image-schemas. A mechanism that simplifies spatial information is described along with a small set of spatial primitives that are sufficient to account for the conceptualizations that preverbal infants use to interpret objects and events. This early system is important to understand because it organizes the adult conceptual system of objects and events and remains its core. With development, the system becomes enriched by language in several ways, and also by means of analogical extension to non-spatial information. Nonspatial bodily information, such as feelings of force and motor activity, is also added, but remains secondary. It becomes associated with spatial representations, but except for its spatial aspects is represented in a more inchoate and less accessible fashion.

Almost every bodily movement, from the most complex to the most mundane, such as walking, can generate impact sounds that contain spatial information of high temporal resolution. Despite the conclusive evidence about the role that the integration of vision, touch and proprioception plays in updating body-representations, hardly any study has looked at the contribution of audition. We show that the representation of a key property of one’s body, like its length, is affected by the sound of one’s actions. Participants tapped on a surface while progressively extending their right arm sideways, and in synchrony with each tap participants listened to a tapping sound. In the critical condition, the sound originated at double the distance at which participants actually tapped. After exposure to this condition, tactile distances on the test right arm, as compared to distances on the reference left arm, felt bigger than those before the exposure. No evidence of changes in tactile distance reports was found at the quadruple tapping sound distance or the asynchronous auditory feedback conditions. Our results suggest that tactile perception is referenced to an implicit body-representation which is informed by auditory feedback. This is the first evidence of the contribution of self-produced sounds to body-representation, addressing the auditory-dependent plasticity of body-representation and its spatial boundaries.

The concept of mental space and the role of the skin in differentiating its boundaries during ontogenesis are considered. Skin diseases (atopic dermatitis and psoriasis) are considered as psychosomatic manifestations of separation trauma, which correlate with two tendencies – “to fusion” and “to encapsulate”, respectively. The study involved 72 women aged 20–40 years, (30 healthy, 17 suffering from psoriasis and 25 atopic dermatitis). Using the “Spatial Self Questionnaire” technique, three types of spatial Ego boundaries are determined: bodily, social and symbolic. It is proved that different experimental groups have a different profile of representations of the boundaries of the Ego compared to the control group. The body boundary of the Ego in the group “atopic dermatitis” is interpreted as super-permeable, and in the group “psoriasis” — as super-nonpermeable. In the “atopic dermatitis” group, the influence of separation trauma manifests itself in confusion when differentiating oneself from others (social boundaries of the Ego), and in the “psoriasis” group — in difficulties when correlating oneself with the outside world (symbolic boundary of the Ego).

This paper discusses Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences theory represented in North Star: “Reading and Writing” and “Listening and speaking” books for level one. From each of the books a chapter has been selected for analysis. For the Reading and Writing book, the chapter contains 36 activities and 31 activities for the Listening and Speaking book. Content analysis has been used along with a list of activities adopted from Botelho (2003) to investigate the occurrences in which different intelligences are enhanced throughout the activities. The results of the research proved an imbalance in the distribution of intelligences. It also showed that the most dominant intelligence was verbal/linguistic followed by intrapersonal, interpersonal, spatial/visual, logical/mathematical and bodily kinesthetic. As for the rest of the intelligences, they had no place in the activities which are suggested to be catered for with supplementary materials.

This article investigates the gender values prescribed through the spatial arrangements and lived bodily practices within the Sultanate palace of Yogyakarta (Indonesia, 1756), which makes women and their space invisible to the public. Reflecting on histories of women’s invisibility and drawing on ethnographic data consisting of interviews and participant observation, this article compares the spatial arrangement of the sultan’s complex with that of the keputren (harem) and examines the critical spatial manifestation of idealized gender relations using visual theory. It finds that the architectural layout conveys not only class but also gender hierarchies. This representation of idealized gender relations is shaped by, and communicated through, the prescription of movement in space and the control of physical appearance through and within space. This ultimately reflects the sultan’s vision of women and his intention to make women and their space invisible to people—especially men—other than the sultan himself.

Within an embodied cognition framework, it is argued that presence in a virtual environment (VE) develops from the construction of a spatial-functional mental model of the VE. Two cognitive processes lead to this model: the representation of bodily actions as possible actions in the VE, and the suppression of incompatible sensory input. It is hypothesized that the conscious sense of presence reflects these two components as spatial presence and involvement. This prediction was confirmed in two studies (N = 246 and N = 296) assessing self-reports of presence and immersion experiences. Additionally, judgments of “realness” were observed as a third presence component. A second-order factor analysis showed a distinction between presence, immersion, and interaction factors. Building on these results, a thirteen-item presence scale consisting of three independent components was developed and verified using confirmatory factor analyses across the two studies.

My Doctoral Thesis investigated different aspects of bodily and spatial representations, how they are modulated by multisensory stimulation, and some physiological correlates of their manipulation. Chapter #1, “The space around the body”, reports three studies on prism adaptation, a technique that takes advantage of brain plasticity in the generation and modification of spatial bodily maps. Specifically, Study #1 investigates how the vision of the limb during two different versions of prism adaptation modulates their aftereffects: larger aftereffects take place with a concurrent vision of the limb after prism adaptation achieved through “ecological” visuo-motor activities; conversely, the vision of the very last part of the movement brings about larger aftereffects after the repeated pointing task. Study #2 examines the effect of a multisensory stimulation during prism adaptation, showing that the pointing error reduction is obtained with fewer pointing movements when the target is a visual-acoustic (multisensory), rather than unisensory stimulus. Finally, Study #3, which was performed in a brain-damaged patient, showed that the integrity of the left parieto-cerebellar circuit is required for an appropriate spatial remapping of proprioceptive maps to occur, and that the modulation through transcranial Direct Current Stimulation of these cortical areas temporarily restores the aftereffects. Chapter #2, “The space in the body”, reports studies on the link between bodily spatial representations and homeostatic regulation. Skin temperature has been recently considered as a physiological parameter of disembodiment, and can be modulated by the manipulation of bodily representations. Three experiments in which spatial bodily maps were manipulated by means of different techniques, inducing direction-specific and lateralized effects, are presented. Specifically, Study #4 showed a reduction of hands’ skin temperature after adaptation to right shifting, but not to left shifting, optical prisms. In Study #5, a modulation of temperature during leftward, but not rightward, optokinetic stimulation was found. Preliminary results from Study #6 show that the sole lateral shift of visual attention is not sufficient to induce a specific skin temperature modulation. Chapter #3, “The space on the body”, concerns the perception of tactile distances, namely, the spatial relationships between single objects that simultaneously touch the skin. In Study #7 a sensory adaptation-aftereffects paradigm was used to show that a tactile distance aftereffect can be induced; this tactile aftereffect shares many lower-level characteristics of classic visual aftereffects, such as orientation and location specificity. These findings suggest that the processing of spatial relationships among tactile events takes place at an early stage of somatosensation. Overall these results suggest the following: firstly, some bodily and spatial representations are susceptible to multisensory stimulations, especially those underpinning the sense of location of the body, sustained by the high-order posterior parietal cortex; secondly, modulation of skin temperature may be considered as an index of modifications of the multisensory representation of the body; thirdly, other bodily maps, such as those providing information about its metric, used in order to process tactile spatial relationships, are lower-level, likely arising at early stages of somatosensory processing.

This chapter considers the relationship between body representations, action, and bodily experiences. It first clarifies the conceptual landscape of body representations and stresses the conceptual and empirical difficulties that the current body schema/body image taxonomy faces, difficulties that can be explained by their constant interaction but not only. There is indeed a lack of precise understanding of the functional role of the body schema as opposed to the body image. Instead of these unclear notions, the chapter proposes distinguishing different types of body representations on the basis of their direction of fit and of their spatial organization. On the one hand, there is a purely descriptive body map that represents well-segmented categorical body parts, in which one can localize one’s sensations. On the other hand, there is a body map that is both descriptive and directive (i.e. pushmi-pullyu representation), and that encodes structural bodily affordances for action planning and control.

How do bodily experiences get a rich spatial content on the basis of the limited information carried by bodily senses? This chapter argues that one needs a map of the body, which represents its enduring properties (i.e. configuration and dimensions). This representation can be decoupled from the biological body leading the subject to experience sensations not only in phantom limbs but also in tools that bear little visual resemblance with the body. Does it entail that there is almost no limit to the malleability of the body map? Or that bodily sensations can be felt even beyond the apparent boundaries of the body, in peripersonal space, and possibly even farther? This chapter examines a series of cases that may cast doubt on the role of the body map for the localization of bodily sensations.

The ability of humans to manufacture objects and represent physical causality makes them the master species in the use of tools. What is the impact of such a specific skill on the processing of bodily body-related spatial information? To what extent does the skilful manipulation of tools require specific embodiment of the device into one’s body representation? The present chapter reviews the effect of tool use on the representation of the body and space surrounding it, by analysing the cognitive effects of tool use and its neural representations. Studies on animals, healthy humans, and neuropsychological patients suggest that multisensory integration of stimuli far from the body is enhanced when a tool can reach those stimuli. Such a spatial remapping indicates that the body schema may adapt to include the device into one’s body representation. Notably, tool use-related changes are not limited to spatial processing, but also to the processing of body-related sensory-motor information. Understanding the cognitive mechanisms underlying tool use and the effect of tool use in the representation of the space around us is a paramount challenge to the understanding of body representation, especially considering that modern and more sophisticated technological tools, such as functional prostheses, robotic interfaces, and virtual reality devices, continually shape the central role of the body in human–environment interactions.

Unilateral spatial neglect has been extensively described for visual and representational manifestations but tactile and motor manifestations as well as body neglect point to bodily manifestations of this neurological condition. This chapter reviews the perceptual, motoric and high-level representational symptoms manifested in neglect patients and attempt to classify them according to the body image/schema framework. One puzzling aspect of the wide spectrum of body neglect symptoms is that physiological bottom-up maneuvers, such as prism adaptation, which act at the level of body schema, do also efficiently improve body image manifestations of neglect. This relationship allows us to elaborate on the dialectical relationships between body image and body schema. Thus, understanding body neglect in terms of diagnosis, evaluation, physiopathology and therapeutics through the dynamical interactions between body schema and body neglect, provide perspectives to manage other lateralized body troubles, neglect-like manifestations of bodily attention or distorted representations.

Our daily living includes bodily contacts with objects and people. While this physical contact occurs naturally, it could also pose a risk of bodily harm—for example, when objects are sharp, or people have bad intentions. It is therefore imperative to have a mechanism that predicts the consequences of bodily contact before it occurs, to guide our interactions appropriately. Evidence from a range of studies suggests a neurofunctional coupling between external visual or auditory stimuli near the body and tactile stimuli on the body. While these multisensory peripersonal representations have been linked to spatial attention, motor control, and social behaviour, a discussion on whether these functions involve a similar mechanism has been missing. Here we suggest that prediction is central to this multimodal coding: visual or auditory stimuli near the body predict tactile consequences of bodily contact. This predictive mechanism is based on learned visuo-tactile associations and modulated by higher-order visual contextual information.

By focusing on technologies of virtual reality in conjunction with theories of “place” and “presence,” this chapter outlines the importance of new approaches to the museological experience and exploration of ancient cities and cultural heritage sites. Exploring fresh approaches to telling historic narratives through embodied interaction, this discussion proceeds to explore post-cartographic and “deep mapping” representations of cultural landscapes through omnidirectional virtual reality. Bodily engagements with virtually rendered places as a form of corporeal cartography references not only the changing nature of the concept of place but also the rise of contemporary post-cartographic frameworks for considering how the act of mapping actively engages with place. The “spatial turn” within the humanities demands that we extend our conceptions of mapping and cartography beyond the positive epistemologies of geographic information science and this chapter explores a series of frameworks for new explorations.

This chapter is a methodological and ethical examination of the following research question: How does one transcribe and analyze the presence and practices of the kindergarten’s youngest children, and other human and non-human actors, in a way that shows their agency and contributions? Video recording is a common method of data generation in social science research and poses the challenge of bringing the audiovisual data into academic texts. Traditionally, video recordings are transformed into pure textual representations called transcription. In particular, it is often the audible speech acts that inform the transcription and analysis, at the expense of the visuals in the video recordings. The embodied, experiential, aesthetic, material and multimodal can be difficult to present through written language alone. The significance of materiality, nonverbal behavior and bodily interaction is enhanced with one- and two-year-old children, whose expressions are often dominated by the nonverbal. Through examples from pedagogical video research in kindergarten, the author explores how different ways of transcribing and analyzing video can visualize the presence, interactions, and practices of the youngest children, the kindergarten teachers and other actors. A visual turn toward poetic video-transcription, multimodal transcription, and a hybrid between drawings and transcription the researcher has named ‘cartoon transcription’, helps to limit marginalization of the different actors and their multifaceted contributions. Breaking the hegemony of the word over the visual can make bodily, spatial, and material resources visible. A fusion of words and images can produce new forms of knowledge, contribute to a high epistemological standard and provide transparency.

Abstract Fictional spaces produced with multidisciplinary research using improving technologiescreate settings that provoke new questions and have diff erent answers. This comes about bybroadening the horizons in virtual space studies, space concept, design, and experience. Evaluatingvirtual space as a layer of reality represents architectural space that belongs to the physical world.The principal factors that form the physicality of a space, its shape and content, are related tocultural, public, societal, perceptual, and intellectual codes. The space concept can be explained asa physical concept. In the sense of human interaction with space, the feelings it elicits, perceptualfactors, both in the subjective and abstract dimensions, that can be described as feelings, and 3Dphysicality. Spaces designed and produced for human use can be perceived diff erently and meanother things to diff erent people through human–space interactions. Perceiving, interpreting, anddescribing a space is a complex process that can only occur by experiencing it.Although virtual reality emerged as a simulation of physical space, there are increasing attempts toform an emotional and physical connection to such spaces today. New technologies used to createnew spaces and descriptions such as virtual reality, virtual space, cyberspace, and hybrid space arearticulated as new layers within the spatial memory accumulated to date.Virtual reality technologies, which can be explained as an interface between humans and machinesand describe diff erent life systems, give one the feeling of being in another space. Although thesespaces are virtual, they can be related to the space concept as they can be experienced and give thefeeling of being somewhere. These settings, which present multi-dimensional spatial experiences bytaking humans into a digital reality, are created using computer support and are experienced usingvarious electronic tools. These settings in which human and machine, organic and non-organicentities meet are also crucial in design education as they improve creative processes related to thefuture, machine-human interaction, and the space concept and its formation.As virtuality beingevaluated as a layer of reality becomes a representation of architectural space that belongs to thephysical world, it also has the potential to approach space design in a new way.It has the potential to aff ect and improve the perception of creating space and deliver spatialsolutions, understand new living conditions, and discover the future by responding to technologicalimprovements.Virtual reality creates a personal space experience that diff racts space and time—improvingtechnologies set these spaces, which simulate reality, as a layer of fact, a refl ection or representation.The cyber and virtual experiences that have emerged in new media spaces have reduced space’sdependency on the physical world through the integration of improving technologies and art. ‘SALT Research’ within Salt Galata, a monumental building in Galata-İstanbul, and ‘Virtual Archive’, a media art project by Refik Anadol that questions the virtual-digital space concept, were chosen as experience spaces. It was emphasized that there are holistic composition differences between spaces due to the current physical space experience that composes the infrastructure of the study and virtual space. It is composed of different elements and is perceived just like real space. The dataset includes a detailed assessment of two different spaces with similar contexts and contains the physical and virtual space analysis through syntactic, semantic and pragmatic scales. Volunteer participants emphasized the differences in holistic composition between the two spaces. They noted that the virtual space differs from the physical space and is composed of different elements and that the user has the perception of belonging just like in a physical space.The physical space, SALT Research, was evaluated as satisfactory and high-quality in terms of aesthetics and equipment. Phrases used to describe it were neat, high spaces, comfort, spaciousness, light, dark areas, tranquillity, silence, acoustic balance, harmony, historical, gripping, transformation, aesthetic and functional, and plain. In contrast, participants saw the Virtual Archive is a new, exciting, different, and innovative experience. The bodily freedom of the virtual space experience was described as optimistic. Through a brief understanding of the space, they overcame the difficulties of physical existence that arose when accessing information in this new environment.Fictional space produced with a multidisciplinary study using improving technologies creates settings where new questions are asked, and different answers are made, broadening the horizons in virtual space studies, space concept, design, and experience. Virtuality being evaluated as a layer of reality represents architectural space that belongs to the physical world.Virtual reality technology changes and influences our time, dimension, and architectural perceptions, the modes of expression and interaction models in art and architecture by taking us into a different universe experienced spiritually and mentally in new space creations.The space experience through the journey of interpretation and understanding of space and architecture tells different things for each person on each occasion. Perceiving space through the physical space experience and active senses via intellectual feedback also affects virtual reality interactions.Different disciplines examine the machine, human, space, and future relations in an interdisciplinary environment. Different designs’ varieties and opportunities have a place in architecture and interior architecture. In the future, the integration of physical space, virtual space, and machine intelligence into space design and design education and the role and effect of the designer will continue to be discussed.Today, new representation environments present new evolutions that improve, evaluate, and interpret spatial ideas. Despite changing technologies, humans must exist somewhere, and existence is related to our sensory, emotional, and memorial creations. In this sense, the place of humans and designers will continue to be questioned in the new spaces created. Keywords: Patrik Schumacher, ethics, ethical paradigms in architecture, humanitarian architecture, architectural media platforms.