The sixth sense organs: The hands

Abstract

The representation of peripersonal space is a parallel processing that simultaneously calls for visual and somatosensory information. Having both tactile and visual receptive fields (RF), bimodal neurons mediate this parallel processing, and their damage, for example, due to stroke, can lead to disturbances in the perception of peripersonal space and therefore in being made aware of the self in the body. Of particular interest to this chapter is the role that the multisensory representations of the peripersonal space play in the unconscious form of the bodily self-consciousness.