Université de Fribourg

Birth and death of a phantom

Dieguez, Sebastian ; Kaeser, Mélanie ; Roux, Camille ; Cottet, Jérôme ; Annoni, Jean-Marie ; Schmidlin, Eric

In: Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology, 2018, vol. 5, no. 1, p. 98–101

Patients with supernumerary phantom limb report experiencing an additional limb duplicating its physical counterpart, usually following a stroke with sensorimotor disturbances. Here, we report a short-lasting case of a right upper supernumerary phantom limb with unusual visuomotor features in a healthy participant during a pure Jacksonian motor seizure unexpectedly induced by continuous...

Université de Fribourg

The bodily self: Insights from clinical and experimental research

Dieguez, Sebastian ; Lopez, Christophe

In: Annals of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, 2017, vol. 60, no. 3, p. 198–207

This review article summarizes neuropsychological descriptions of abnormal body representations in brain-damaged patients and recent neuroscientific investigations of their sensorimotor underpinnings in healthy participants. The first part of the article describes unilateral disorders of the bodily self, such as asomatognosia, feelings of amputation, supernumerary phantom limbs and...

Université de Fribourg

Distinct contributions of Brodmann areas 1 and 2 to body ownership

Martuzzi, Roberto ; Zwaag, Wietske van der ; Dieguez, Sebastian ; Serino, Andrea ; Gruetter, Rolf ; Blanke, Olaf

In: Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2015, vol. 10, no. 11, p. 1449-1459

Although body ownership—i.e. the feeling that our bodies belong to us—modulates activity within the primary somatosensory cortex (S1), it is still unknown whether this modulation occurs within a somatotopically defined portion of S1. We induced an illusory feeling of ownership for another person’s finger by asking participants to hold their palm against another person’s palm and to...

Université de Fribourg

Experience-based auditory predictions modulate brain activity to silence as do real sounds

Chouiter, Leila ; Tzovara, Athina ; Dieguez, Sebastian ; Annoni, Jean-Marie ; Magezi, David ; De Lucia, Marzia ; Spierer, Lucas

In: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2015, vol. 27, no. 10, p. 1968–1980

Interactions between stimuli's acoustic features and experience-based internal models of the environment enable listeners to compensate for the disruptions in auditory streams that are regularly encountered in noisy environments. However, whether auditory gaps are filled in predictively or restored a posteriori remains unclear. The current lack of positive statistical evidence that internal...

Université de Fribourg

High and low stimulus-driven conflict engage segregated brain networks, not quantitatively different resources

Chouiter, Leila ; Dieguez, Sebastian ; Annoni, Jean-Marie ; Spierer, Lucas

In: Brain Topography, 2014, vol. 27, no. 2, p. 279–292

Task-irrelevant information is constantly present in our environment and may interfere with the processing of the information necessary to achieve goal-directed behavior. While task goals determine which information must be suppressed, the demand for inhibitory control depends on the strength of the interference induced by incoming, task-irrelevant information. Whether the same or distinct...

Université de Fribourg

The right thalamic ventral posterolateral nucleus seems to be determinant for macrosomatognosia: a case report

ElTarhouni, Amir H. ; Beer, Laura ; Mouthon, Michael ; Erni, Britt ; Aellen, Jerome ; Annoni, Jean-Marie ; Accolla, Ettore ; Dieguez, Sebastian ; Chabwine, Joelle N.

In: BMC Neurology, 2020, vol. 20, no. 1, p. 393

Background: Macrosomatognosiais the illusory sensation of a substantially enlarged body part. This disorder of the body schema, also called “Alice in wonderland syndrome” is still poorly understood and requires careful documentation and analysis of cases. The patient presented here is unique owing to his unusual macrosomatognosia phenomenology, but also given the unreported localization...