ABSTRACT
The concept of the existence of an anatomo-functional apparatus specific to body knowledge is, however, less straightforward. A disorder of conscious body awareness and knowledge frequently accompanies cortical lesions, with different characteristics according to the site of the lesion. Hallucinatory phenomena have been described during attacks of epilepsy or migraine in which the patient feels their body or parts of it as abnormally large or small, or projected externally as in a mirror. A series of studies carried out on groups of patients chosen only for the presence of unilateral hemispheric lesions has shown that disturbances of body knowledge can be present, though possibly with different characteristics, following both right and left hemisphere lesion. The primary task was a sequential same-different visual matching task for body position memory, while in the secondary task the subjects were engaged in unconstrained nonrepetitive movements of the arms or legs.
