Proprioception impacts body perception in healthy aging – Insights from a psychophysical and computational approach

IF 4.1 2区综合性期刊 Q1 MULTIDISCIPLINARY SCIENCES

iScience Pub Date : 2025-09-03 DOI:10.1016/j.isci.2025.113481

Gaia Risso , Marion Bieri , Tommaso Bertoni , Isabella Martinelli , Giulio Mastria , Loredana Catinari , Lara Allet , Andrea Serino , Michela Bassolino

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Abstract

The way we perceive our body and its dimensions depends on how our brain combines multisensory information. As the human sensory system declines with age, we hypothesize that body perception may change during aging. We investigated this hypothesis by comparing body ownership (BO) and upper limb perceived dimensions (mBR) in young and older individuals (>65 years). We used computational and psychophysical methods to quantify alterations in mBR and BO, and modeled their relationship with sensorimotor and cognitive factors. Results revealed altered body perception in healthy older adults, with significant underestimation in arm dimensions and increased feeling of ownership over an incongruent virtual hand, incorporating it into their motor plans. Reduced abilities in localizing one’s own body in space (i.e., proprioception) emerged as a common factor influencing both BO and mBR. These findings pave the way for stimulation strategies to maintain or restore body perception in aging.

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本体感觉影响健康衰老的身体感知-来自心理物理和计算方法的见解

我们感知自己身体及其尺寸的方式取决于我们的大脑如何结合多感官信息。由于人类的感觉系统随着年龄的增长而衰退，我们假设身体感知可能会随着年龄的增长而改变。我们通过比较年轻人和老年人（65岁）的身体所有权（BO）和上肢感知维度（mBR）来研究这一假设。我们使用计算和心理物理方法来量化mBR和BO的变化，并模拟它们与感觉运动和认知因素的关系。结果显示，健康老年人的身体感知发生了变化，手臂尺寸明显低估，对不一致的虚拟手的所有权感增加，并将其纳入他们的运动计划。身体在空间中的定位能力降低（即本体感觉）是影响BO和mBR的共同因素。这些发现为在衰老过程中维持或恢复身体知觉的刺激策略铺平了道路。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

iScience Multidisciplinary-Multidisciplinary

CiteScore

7.20

自引率

1.70%

发文量

1972

审稿时长

6 weeks

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