Distortion of mental body representations. Matthew R. Longo. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, December 21 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2021.11.005
Highlights
* Distortions in the representation of the body are a conspicuous feature of several clinical disorders, including eating disorders and chronic pain.
* Recent work has shown that distortions are also common in healthy individuals, including in tasks assessing tactile spatial perception, proprioception, and the conscious body image.
* Across a range of tasks, there is a general bias to overestimate body width compared to length/height.
* Distorted body representations in conditions such as anorexia nervosa and chronic pain appear to be exaggerated forms of the distortions that occur in healthy individuals.
* Distorted body representations appear to be linked to aspects of psychological well-being, including body satisfaction and self-esteem.
Abstract: Our body is central to our sense of self, and distorted body representations are found in several serious medical conditions. This paper reviews evidence that distortions of body representations are also common in healthy individuals, and occur in domains including tactile spatial perception, proprioception, and the conscious body image. Across domains, there is a general tendency for body width to be overestimated compared to body length. Intriguingly, distortions in both eating disorders and chronic pain appear to be exaggerations of this baseline pattern of distortions, suggesting that these conditions may relate to dysfunction of mechanisms for body perception. Distortions of body representations provide a revealing window into basic aspects of self-perception.
Keywords: selfbody imagetouchproprioceptionpaineating disorders
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