Spatial communication systems across languages reflect universal action constraints.

The extent to which languages share properties reflecting the non-linguistic constraints of the speakers who speak them is key to the debate regarding the relationship between language and cognition. A critical case is spatial communication, where it has been argued that semantic universals should exist, if anywhere. Here, using an experimental paradigm able to separate variation within a language from variation between languages, we tested the use of spatial demonstratives-the most fundamental and frequent spatial terms across languages.

When Right Goes Left: Phantom Touch Induced by Mirror Box Procedure in Healthy Individuals.

In the present article, we investigated the possibility of inducing phantom tactile sensations in healthy individuals similar to those that we observed in patients after stroke. On the basis of previous research, we assumed that manipulating visual feedbacks may guide and influence, under certain conditions, the phenomenal experience of touch. To this aim, we used the Tactile Quadrant Stimulation (TQS) test in which subjects, in the crucial condition, must indicate whether and where they perceive a double tactile stimulation applied simultaneously in different quadrants of the two hands (asymmetrical Double Simultaneous Stimulation trial, Asym-DSS).

Phantom touch: How to unmask sensory unawareness after stroke.

Comprehending the nature of tactile disorders following brain damage is crucial to understand how the brain constructs sensory awareness. Stroke patients may be unaware of being touched on the affected hand if, simultaneously, they are touched on the unaffected hand (i.e.

Spatial demonstratives and perceptual space: To reach or not to reach?

There is much debate regarding the relationship between spatial demonstratives ('this' or 'that') and perceptual space. While some have argued for a close mapping between the use of demonstratives and the peripersonal/extrapersonal space distinction (Coventry et al., 2008, 2014; Diessel, 2014), others have argued that distance from a speaker does not affect demonstrative choice (e.

The asymmetrical effect of leftward and rightward prisms on intact visuospatial cognition.

Rightward prismatic adaptation (RPA) can reduce neglect symptoms in patients whereas adaptation to leftward deviating prisms (LPA) can induce neglect-like behavior in healthy subjects. One influential anatomo-functional model of prismatic adaptation (PA) postulates that it inhibits activity of the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) contralateral to the prismatic deviation. By hypo-activating the PPC and thus eventually acting on interhemispheric balance, both LPA and RPA could possibly affect visuospatial perception in healthy subjects, however, such behavioral modulation has seldom been reported after RPA.