La proprioception est la modalité essentielle pour la construction du schéma corporel (SC) qui se construit au cours de la vie. Cette thèse cherche à comprendre la construction du SC au cours du développement en explorant l’intégration proprioceptive (IP). L’utilisation des vibrations tendineuses en IRMf chez l’enfant et l’adulte, révèle que les bases neurales de l’IP sont établies dès 7 ans. Mais, chez l’enfant apparait une moindre activation des régions pariétales et sensorielles ainsi que l’activation du cortex frontopolaire, confirmant la lente maturation de l’IP. L’étude de la maturation de l’acuité proprioceptive (AP) corrélé à des données d’IRMf de repos chez l’enfant et l’adulte révèle que l’AP est supportée dès 8 ans par une interaction entre le réseau sensorimoteur (SMN) et frontopariétal (FPN). Chez l’enfant seulement apparait une relation inverse entre FPN-SMN et AP et une relation cerebello-corticales et AP. Un désengagement des connexions cerebello-corticales laisse place à des connexions cortico-corticales avec l’âge. L’exploration du couplage perception-action, essentiel pour la construction du SC, révèle que la manipulation de l’action impacte plus largement la perception des enfants et des adolescents. La construction d’une représentation stable grâce à ce couplage est fonctionnelle dès 6 ans mais poursuit sa maturation au cours de l’adolescence. Nous avons révélé l’établissement précoce et la lente maturation des bases neurales du SC. L’engagement de structures supplémentaires chez l’enfant renforcerait le neurodéveloppement du SC. La construction du SC utilisant l’IP est moins efficace chez les enfants et les adolescents révélant sa lente maturation. / Proprioception is the sensory modality essential to body schema (BS) building which is built through ontogenesis. This thesis’ aim highlights the building of the BS through childhood and adolescence by exploring proprioceptive integration (PI) at both behavioural and brain level. Using tendon vibration during fMRI in children and adults, revealed that the neural basis of BS are already established from the age of 7. Yet, in children appeared a less activation of parietal and sensory areas as well as an exclusive activation of the frontopolar cortex confirming the slow maturation of PI. Proprioceptive acuity (PA) assessment correlated with resting state data in children and adults revealed that PA is supported by an interaction between the sensorimotor and the frontoparietal networks in both groups. Yet, in children only, this interaction is reversed compared to adults, and they presented also the involvement of cortico-cerebellar connexions to support PA. The disengagement of cortico-cerebellar connexions leaves room to cortico-cortical connexions with age. The evaluation of the perception-action coupling, essential to the BS building through development, revealed that action strongly impact children’s and adolescents’ perception of human body. The building of a reliable representation thanks to this coupling, is present from the age of 6 but continue its maturation through adolescence. Therefore, we revealed the early establishment and the slow maturation of the BS neural basis. The engagement of additional structures in children would reinforce the BS neurodevelopment. The BS building using PI is less efficient in children and adolescents revealing its slow maturation.

No presente estudo, propomos o exame do problema da função simbólica nos primeiros trabalhos de Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Mais especificamente, trata-se de abordar a posição do problema n\' \"A estrutura do comportamento\", obra publicada em 1942, e sua retomada crítica na \"Fenomenologia da percepção\", publicada em 1945. Esse tema, pouco explicitado pelo filósofo, é também objeto de raros debates entre seus comentadores. Em seu primeiro trabalho, Merleau-Ponty, apropriando-se da semântica do símbolo advinda da neuropsiquiatria do início do século XX, caracterizara o nível de organização da corporalidade humana a partir da sua capacidade de ultrapassar o caráter imediato das situações vividas. A atitude categorial, ou simbólica, aparecia, então, como uma nova significação do comportamento, tendo em vista as formas sincrética e amovível do comportamento encontradas na escala zoológica. A atividade humana investiria o meio de virtualidade e, assim, redimensionaria a existência concreta que se denota no comportamento animal. Nos capítulos da \"Fenomenologia da percepção\" em que Merleau-Ponty trata da espacialidade, da motricidade e da expressividade do corpo próprio, do mesmo modo que o autor prescinde das explicações causais dos fenômenos patológicos utilizados à guisa de material de discussão, ele prescinde das explicações calcadas na função simbólica, doravante associadas a análises de cunho intelectualista. O filósofo combate, tanto na neuropsiquiatria representada especialmente por Gelb e Goldstein quanto na filosofia de Cassirer, o que considera representar uma autonomia crescente da ideação simbólica na dinâmica entre conteúdo e forma. Ao mesmo tempo, Merleau-Ponty nos faz ver que, nessa neuropsiquiatria e nessa filosofia do símbolo, é possível apreender análises fenomenológicas acerca da expressividade motora, gesticular e linguageira do corpo próprio. Tais análises revelam, nele, uma forma de saber que não se reduz nem à ordem do em si nem à ordem do para si, delineando, portanto, a noção de intencionalidade que interessa ao filósofo desenvolver, fundada na unidade sinérgica do corpo próprio. Daí a importância que um outro dispositivo teórico-antropológico adquire ao longo da \"Fenomenologia da percepção\": a noção de esquema corporal. / In this study, we aim to investigate the problem of the symbolic function in Maurice Merleau-Ponty\'s first works. More specifically, we address the position of that problem in \"The Structure of Behavior\", published in 1942, and its critical review in the \"Phenomenology of perception\", published in 1945. This theme, on which the philosopher provided few specifications, is also a source of rare debates among his commentators. In his first work, Merleau-Ponty, using the semantics of the symbol from early 20th-century neuropsychiatry, characterizes the organizational level of human corporality based on its ability to go beyond the immediate nature of the experienced situations. The categorial or symbolic attitude seemed to be a new signification of behavior, in view of the synchretic and movable forms of behavior found on the zoological scale. Human activity would imbue the environment with virtuality and, thus, redimension the concrete existence denoted in animal behavior. In those chapters of the \"Phenomenology of perception\" in which Merleau-Ponty discusses the spatiality, motricity and expressiveness of the own body, in the same way as the author does without the causal explanations of the pathological phenomena used as discussion material, he dispenses with the explanations traced in the symbolic function, hereafter associated with intellectualist analyses. The philosopher combats, both in the neuropsychiatry particularly represented by Gelb and Goldstein and in Cassirer\'s philosophy, what he considers to represent a growing autonomy of the symbolic idea in the dynamics between content and form. At the same time, Merleau-Ponty makes us see that, in this neuropsychiatry and philosophy of the symbol, phenomenological analyses can be apprehended about motor, gesture and language expressions of the own body. These analyses reveal a form of knowing that is reduced neither to the order of in itself nor to the order of for itself, thus outlining the notion of intentionality which the philosopher wants to develop, based on the synergical unit of the own body. This explains the importance another theoretical-anthropological device gains in the \"Phenomenology of perception\": the notion of body schema.

Body schema is indispensable for sensorimotor control and learning, but it remains unclear whether it is associated with cognitive functions. Data from patients with spatial neglect support this view; yet observations in healthy participants are inconsistent. Here I conducted two sets of experiments examining influences of trunk position: the first probed attention and spatial working memory using a change detection task and a two-back task; the second used different versions of the Posner paradigm to examine whether head-on-trunk position governs disengagement of attention. In none of the experiments did I observe that trunk turns altered performance in the left versus right visual field in an ipsiversive fashion as reported in neglect. Nevertheless, I found that trunk-right position improved performance at eccentric locations of the visual field. The data are inconsistent with previous findings of head-on-trunk effects in normal participants. Further studies are required to clarify these discrepancies.

Body schema is indispensable for sensorimotor control and learning, but it remains unclear whether it is associated with cognitive functions. Data from patients with spatial neglect support this view; yet observations in healthy participants are inconsistent. Here I conducted two sets of experiments examining influences of trunk position: the first probed attention and spatial working memory using a change detection task and a two-back task; the second used different versions of the Posner paradigm to examine whether head-on-trunk position governs disengagement of attention. In none of the experiments did I observe that trunk turns altered performance in the left versus right visual field in an ipsiversive fashion as reported in neglect. Nevertheless, I found that trunk-right position improved performance at eccentric locations of the visual field. The data are inconsistent with previous findings of head-on-trunk effects in normal participants. Further studies are required to clarify these discrepancies.

We all have a body : our own body and just one body. Through it, we move, we interact with the world and other persons, we perceive, basically we live. It's a unique essential object. If it is true that we have only one physical body, we also have many representations of it in the brain. There is little agreement about the exact number of body representations in the brain, but not on the fact that we have more than one. The multi-componential models of body representation are based on the notion, supported by scientific evidence that different activities demand and rely on specifically adapted representations. In my thesis, I studied one particular body representation that is used and involved in action planning and execution, i.e. the Body Schema. I have been able to describe and measure the plasticity of the Body Schema and its level of specificity in healthy individuals. In particular, using a tool-use paradigm, I showed that the Body Schema is quickly and efficiently updated once a change in the body configuration occurs. With a series of kinematic studies, I contributed unveiling the ingredients that rule the plasticity of the BS and the sensory information that is used to this purpose. As a result of my thesis, I suggest that a clearer definition and operational description of the Body Schema, as an action-devoted repertoire of effectors representations, is possible, particularly thanks to its plastic features

No presente estudo, propomos o exame do problema da função simbólica nos primeiros trabalhos de Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Mais especificamente, trata-se de abordar a posição do problema n\' \"A estrutura do comportamento\", obra publicada em 1942, e sua retomada crítica na \"Fenomenologia da percepção\", publicada em 1945. Esse tema, pouco explicitado pelo filósofo, é também objeto de raros debates entre seus comentadores. Em seu primeiro trabalho, Merleau-Ponty, apropriando-se da semântica do símbolo advinda da neuropsiquiatria do início do século XX, caracterizara o nível de organização da corporalidade humana a partir da sua capacidade de ultrapassar o caráter imediato das situações vividas. A atitude categorial, ou simbólica, aparecia, então, como uma nova significação do comportamento, tendo em vista as formas sincrética e amovível do comportamento encontradas na escala zoológica. A atividade humana investiria o meio de virtualidade e, assim, redimensionaria a existência concreta que se denota no comportamento animal. Nos capítulos da \"Fenomenologia da percepção\" em que Merleau-Ponty trata da espacialidade, da motricidade e da expressividade do corpo próprio, do mesmo modo que o autor prescinde das explicações causais dos fenômenos patológicos utilizados à guisa de material de discussão, ele prescinde das explicações calcadas na função simbólica, doravante associadas a análises de cunho intelectualista. O filósofo combate, tanto na neuropsiquiatria representada especialmente por Gelb e Goldstein quanto na filosofia de Cassirer, o que considera representar uma autonomia crescente da ideação simbólica na dinâmica entre conteúdo e forma. Ao mesmo tempo, Merleau-Ponty nos faz ver que, nessa neuropsiquiatria e nessa filosofia do símbolo, é possível apreender análises fenomenológicas acerca da expressividade motora, gesticular e linguageira do corpo próprio. Tais análises revelam, nele, uma forma de saber que não se reduz nem à ordem do em si nem à ordem do para si, delineando, portanto, a noção de intencionalidade que interessa ao filósofo desenvolver, fundada na unidade sinérgica do corpo próprio. Daí a importância que um outro dispositivo teórico-antropológico adquire ao longo da \"Fenomenologia da percepção\": a noção de esquema corporal. / In this study, we aim to investigate the problem of the symbolic function in Maurice Merleau-Ponty\'s first works. More specifically, we address the position of that problem in \"The Structure of Behavior\", published in 1942, and its critical review in the \"Phenomenology of perception\", published in 1945. This theme, on which the philosopher provided few specifications, is also a source of rare debates among his commentators. In his first work, Merleau-Ponty, using the semantics of the symbol from early 20th-century neuropsychiatry, characterizes the organizational level of human corporality based on its ability to go beyond the immediate nature of the experienced situations. The categorial or symbolic attitude seemed to be a new signification of behavior, in view of the synchretic and movable forms of behavior found on the zoological scale. Human activity would imbue the environment with virtuality and, thus, redimension the concrete existence denoted in animal behavior. In those chapters of the \"Phenomenology of perception\" in which Merleau-Ponty discusses the spatiality, motricity and expressiveness of the own body, in the same way as the author does without the causal explanations of the pathological phenomena used as discussion material, he dispenses with the explanations traced in the symbolic function, hereafter associated with intellectualist analyses. The philosopher combats, both in the neuropsychiatry particularly represented by Gelb and Goldstein and in Cassirer\'s philosophy, what he considers to represent a growing autonomy of the symbolic idea in the dynamics between content and form. At the same time, Merleau-Ponty makes us see that, in this neuropsychiatry and philosophy of the symbol, phenomenological analyses can be apprehended about motor, gesture and language expressions of the own body. These analyses reveal a form of knowing that is reduced neither to the order of in itself nor to the order of for itself, thus outlining the notion of intentionality which the philosopher wants to develop, based on the synergical unit of the own body. This explains the importance another theoretical-anthropological device gains in the \"Phenomenology of perception\": the notion of body schema.

This thesis introduces an orienting mechanism and control system for the purpose of eye tonometry. The design is based on a 3RRR spherical parallel manipulator architecture. The end-effector is mounted with a triad of force sensing elements. Presented in this paper is a unique approach to force control based on an artificial neural network. The mechanism generates movements to collect data about its tactile environment ultimately generating a path to the force sensors' equilibrium point.

The variables that contribute to the acquisition of personal identity are many, and the interactions that occur before someone realizes "I am ... " are complex, to say the least. The process of ' identification' that is, the aforementioned acquisition of the self is not a static process that is the same for each person. Although some similar patterns of existence may occur, it is ultimately a unique occurrence. I propose that in the 'construction of the self that there are three broad facets of existence that should be addressed in answering questions concerning personal identity the physiological, the psychological, and the social. Each of these factors contributes to the process of becoming that is personal identity. This is in line with modem psychological models. The present work seeks to bring to light some of these facets of personal identity in general. More than this however, an attempt will be made to examine some of the ways in which physical disability can affect one's sense of personal narrative that is woven into "Who I am and whom I wish to be." In the course of this work several topics will surface. First an emphasis will be placed on the physical expressions and ' limitations' of the body as an extension into space. The concept of the "body schema" will be explained here to illustrate the ways in which the body is integrated into the self. Next, the psychological effects of physical disability will be addressed with a focus toward the reconstruction of mental representations of the 'normal' body and the resultant effects of this reconstruction. Here, the "body image" of the disabled individual will be discussed using data from

Diploma thesis "Body schema in Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease" is an experimental work which deals with body schema perception. As a part of the thesis there are particular tests of body schema included, which examine difference between control group and group of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Research part of the work deals with current findings about body schema and with findings about chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. There is more detailed analyze of musculoskeletal questions in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease included. In an experimental part of the thesis there are comments on results of the body schema tests. The tests are focused on stereognosis, on position sense, on perception of self body size and on the ability to achieve isolated movement. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

The classic distinction between the body schema and the body image received renewed interest in cognitive psychology, in part because of the attempts by the leading psychologist Charles Spence and his co-authors to synthesise a mounting body of research into the multisensory nature and functional properties of the neural structures in primate cortex that are sensitive and responsive to cross-modal stimuli generated from the body and objects located close to the body, and the famous rubber hand illusion which purported to illustrate how the perception and understanding of what counts as one’s body, i.e., our body image, can be manipulated to include foreign, body-part-like, objects such as a rubber hand. This approach was intended to settle age old questions about how the body schema – the system sub-personal sensorimotor system that shapes, facilitates and regulates motor control – is implemented in the brain and address historic confusions about how the body schema should be understood as an explanatory concept, as well as the problems surrounding the body schema and image distinction on the grounds of the persistent conflation between the two concepts. However, after offering several proposals as to how the body schema should be used to organise and interpret the empirical data, the distinction fell out of favour with Spence and his colleagues on the grounds of the very problems they intended to resolve. The proposed solution is an alternative theoretical framework that, I shall argue, never materialised. Instead, the various definitions they disseminate, I will claim, simply serve to further perpetuate the same problems and confusions about the body schema. Thus, the current state of the literature on the body image and schema in cognitive psychology is in dire need of a conceptual framework that would help us situate and interpret the important empirical data. I propose that we revisit the philosophical debates that were inspired by the philosopher Shaun Gallagher as part of his project to provide a conceptual analysis of the body schema and image distinction and vindicate its status as an important explanatory device for the explanatory ambitions of embodied cognition. Gallagher’s analysis opens up important questions about how the sub-personal multisensory processes of the body schema not only facilitate moment-by-moment motor behaviours, but how they shape and optimise motor control across developmental timelines, as well the importance of the embodied configuration of an agent and its particular eco-niche for shaping and facilitating its motor behaviours. The second important argument of the thesis is that the response to Gallagher’s analysis has simply served to suppress the line of research that Gallagher inspired because the questions his analysis raises have been overshadowed by more general disputes between Gallagher and his opponents about the shape an analysis of the body schema from the perspective of embodied cognition should take. As such, potentially promising lines of research in relation to the body schema have since dried up. As part of my attempt to make progress on the issues that are laid out at the first and second stages of the thesis, the third stage will involve an exploration into the seminal Bayesian approach to understanding cross-modal cue optimisation as it applies to object perception (Banks & Ernst, 2002) and the recent extension of this paradigm to the multimodal sensorimotor processes that underpin motor behaviour in action-oriented cognitive science (e.g., Friston, 2010). The conclusion of the thesis is that the move from an embodied to an action-oriented analysis of the body schema, and the conceptual distinction of which it is part, provides us with the right kind of theoretical resources to begin to pursue fruitful avenues of research that allow us to begin to address the questions set out by Gallagher’s analysis whilst avoiding (some of) the pitfalls that beset the embodied approach. In the final chapter I use this model of the body schema to illustrate how it can provide the basis for working back up towards a comprehensive theory of the body image and schema distinction, which I then bring to bear on current, as-yet-unaddressed, issues in developmental psychology.