Body Schema and Body Image
New Directions
Edited by YOCHAI ATARIA
Tel-Hai College, Israel
SHOGO TANAKA
Tokai University, Japan
SHAUN GALLAGHER
University of Memphis, USA, and University of Wollongong, Australia
3
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Acknowledgement vii
About the Editors ix
Contributors xi
Introduction xiii
PART I: THEORETICAL CLARIFICATION: BODY SCHEMA AND BODY IMAGE
1. What is the body schema? 3
Frédérique de Vignemont, Victor Pitron, and Adrian J. T. Alsmith
2. The space of the body schema: putting the schema in movement 18
David Morris
3. Body schema dynamics in Merleau-Ponty 33
Jan Halák
4. A radical phenomenology of the body: subjectivity and sensations in body image and body schema
Helena De Preester
5. Body schema and body image in motor learning: refining Merleau-Ponty’s notion of body schema
Shogo Tanaka
52
69
6. Reimagining the body image 85
Shaun Gallagher
7. The body in the German neurology of the early twentieth century 99
Andreas Kalckert
PART II: BRAIN, BODY, AND SELF
8. Plasticity and tool use in the body schema 117
Daniele Romano and Angelo Maravita
9. Triadic body representations in the human cerebral cortex and peripheral nerves 133
Noriaki Kanayama and Kentaro Hiromitsu
10. Body models in humans, animals, and robots: mechanisms and plasticity 152
Matej Hoffmann
11. From implicit to explicit body awareness in the first two years of life 181
Philippe Rochat and Sara Valencia Botto
12. Cross-referenced body and action for the unified self: empirical, developmental, and clinical perspectives 194
Shu Imaizumi, Tomohisa Asai, and Michiko Miyazaki
13. Growing up a self: on the relation between body image and the experience of the interoceptive body 210
Rosie Drysdale and Manos Tsakiris
PART III: DISORDERS, ANOMALIES, AND THERAPIES
14. The embodied and social self: insights on body image and body schema from neurological conditions
Jonathan Cole
15. Unilateral body neglect: schemas versus images?
Laurence Havé, Anne-Emmanuelle Priot, Laure Pisella, Gilles Rode, and Yves Rossetti
16. Neural underpinnings of body image and body schema disturbances
Jasmine Ho and Bigna Lenggenhager
17. Body schema and body image disturbances in individuals with multiple sclerosis
Britt Normann
18. Body schema and pain
Katsunori Miyahara
19. Feeling of a presence and anomalous body perception
Masayuki Hara, Olaf Blanke, and Noriaki Kanayama
20. The body image–body schema/ownership–agency model for pathologies: four case studies
Aviya Ben David and Yochai Ataria
Acknowledgement
We thank Noam Tiran for his help with this volume’s preparation.
About the Editors
Yochai Ataria is an associate professor at Tel-Hai College, Israel. He conducted his post-doctoral research in the Neurobiology Department at the Weizmann Institute of Science. He is the author of the following books: The Structural Trauma of Western Culture (2017); Body Disownership in Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (2018); The Mathematics of Trauma [Hebrew] (2014); Not in our Brain [Hebrew] (2019); Levi and Ka-Tsetnik (2021); and Consciousness in Flesh (in press). In addition, he co-edited the following volumes: Interdisciplinary Handbook of Culture and Trauma (2016); Jean Améry: Beyond the Minds Limits (2019); Kafka: New Perspectives [Hebrew] (2013); The End of the Human Era [Hebrew] (2016); 2001: A Space Odyssey—50th Anniversary [Hebrew] (2019).
Shogo Tanaka is a professor of psychology and philosophy at Tokai University in Japan. He received his PhD in philosophical psychology from Tokyo Institute of Technology. Dr Tanaka is primarily interested in phenomenology and psychology and, more specifically, in clarifying the theoretical foundations of psychology from the perspective of embodiment, being inspired by the ideas of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The topics of his published papers encompass a broad range of issues, including body schema, body image, skill acquisition, embodied self, social cognition, theory of mind, and intercorporeality. From 2013 to 2014, and from 2016 to 2017, he stayed at the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Heidelberg in Germany as a visiting scholar, where he worked on phenomenology, psychology, and psychopathology. His recent publications include: ‘Intercorporeality and Aida’ (Theory & Psychology, 27, 337–353), ‘What is it like to be disconnected from the body?’ (Journal of Consciousness Studies, 25, 239–262), and other articles.
Shaun Gallagher is the Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Excellence in Philosophy at the University of Memphis, USA, and Professorial Fellow at the School of Liberal Arts, University of Wollongong, Australia. He was a Humboldt Foundation Anneliese Maier Research Fellow (2012–18). His publications include: Action and Interaction (2020); Enactivist Interventions: Rethinking the Mind (2017); The Neurophenomenology of Awe and Wonder (2015); Phenomenology (2012); The Phenomenological Mind (with Dan Zahavi, 2012); and How the Body Shapes the Mind (2005). He is also editor-in-chief of the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
Contributors
Adrian J. T. Alsmith, Philosophy department, King’s College, London, UK
Tomohisa Asai, Senior Researcher, Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR), Seika, Japan
Yochai Ataria, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Tel-Hai College, Israel
Olaf Blanke, Professor, Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Center for Neuroprosthetics & BrainMind Institute, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Geneva, Switzerland
Sara Valencia Botto, Lecturer and Researcher in Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, USA
Jonathan Cole, Clinical Neurophysiologist and Consultant, Poole and Salisbury Hospitals, UK
Aviya Ben David, Research Assistant, Department of Psychology, Tel-Hai College, Israel
Rosie Drysdale, Postgraduate Research Student, Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London, London, UK
Shaun Gallagher, Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Excellence in Philosophy, University of Memphis, USA, and Professorial Fellow, School of Liberal Arts, University of Wollongong, Australia
Jan Halák, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, Palacký University Olomouc, Olomouc, Czech Republic
Masayuki Hara, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Saitama University, Saitama, Japan
Laurence Havé, ImpAct/Trajectoires Team, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, Bron, and Hôpital d’Instruction des Armées Desgenettes, Lyon, France
Kentaro Hiromitsu, JSPS Research Fellow, Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo; Project Researcher, Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo; and Visiting Researcher, Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Cognitive Mechanisms Laboratories, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR), Kyoto, Japan
Jasmine Ho, PhD Student and Member of the Cognitive Neuropsychology Research Group, Department of Psychology, University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
Matej Hoffmann, Assistant Professor, Department of Cybernetics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic
Shu Imaizumi, Assistant Professor, Institute for Education and Human Development, Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan
Andreas Kalckert, Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy, Institute for Bioscience, University of Skövde, Skövde, Sweden
Noriaki Kanayama, Scientist, Human Informatics and Interaction Research Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, and Lecturer, Center for Brain, Mind and KANSEI Sciences Research, Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan
Bigna Lenggenhager, Professor and Head of the Cognitive Neuropsychology Research Group, University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
Angelo Maravita, Professor of Psychobiology and Head of Psychology Department, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
Katsunori Miyahara, Specially Appointed Lecturer, Center for Human Nature, Artificial Intelligence, and Neuroscience (CHAIN), Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan
Michiko Miyazaki, Associate Professor, Faculty of Social Information Studies, Otsuma Women’s University, Tokyo, Japan
David Morris, Professor of Philosophy, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
Britt Normann, Professor in Health Sciences, Nord University, Bodø, and Clinical Specialist in Neurological Physiotherapy and Researcher, Nordland Hospital Trust, Bodø, Norway
Laure Pisella, ImpAct/Trajectoires Team, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, Bron, France
Victor Pitron, Psychiatrist, Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, and PhD Student, the Jean Nicod Institute, Paris, France
Helena De Preester, Professor of Philososophy, The Royal Academy of Fine Arts and the Royal Conservatory, School of Arts, University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Ghent, and Visiting research professor, Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Ghent University, Belgium
Anne-Emmanuelle Priot, ImpAct/Trajectoires Team, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, Bron, and Institut de Recherche Biomédicale des Armées (IRBA), Brétigny-sur-Orge, France
Philippe Rochat, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Emory Infant and Child Lab, Emory University, Atlanta, USA
Gilles Rode, ImpAct/Trajectoires Team, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, Bron, and Service de médecine physique et réadaptation, Hôpital Henry-Gabrielle, Hospices Civils de Lyon, France
Daniele Romano, Researcher, Psychology Department, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy; Department of History, Society and Human Studies, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy
Yves Rossetti, ImpAct/Trajectoires Team, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, Bron, and Plate-forme Mouvement et Handicap, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, Bron, France
Shogo Tanaka, Professor of Psychology and Philosophy, Tokai University, Tokyo, Japan
Manos Tsakiris, Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London, London, UK
Frédérique de Vignemont, Jean Nicod Institute, CNRS - EHESS - ENS, PSL University, Paris, France
Introduction
Yochai Ataria, Shogo Tanaka, and Shaun Gallagher
According to the famous saying, ‘We feel well as long as we do not feel our body’. Indeed, under normal circumstances, we largely forget our body. As long as we continue to function smoothly in the world, our body remains in the background. By contrast, stress, stares, injuries, disabilities, certain cultural prejudices, and the like can shift the body into the foreground.
Not only do we forget our bodies in our everyday existence, but philosophers seem to have ignored the question of the body for too long. Even today, philosophical discussions of the body often approach it as a thing to be examined from a scientific viewpoint—the body-as-object rather than the body-as-subject.
There remain many outstanding questions concerning the nature and the history of the body. However, today, in the age of neuroscience, one of the most pressing questions seems to concern whether the body is in the brain, that is, can all bodily processes relating to perceptual and motoric functions be reduced to neuronal representations?
A neuroscientific explanation of phantom limbs appears to suggest that our body can be reduced to maps in the brain or that the body, as we experience it, is itself a phantom produced by neural processes. Philosophers from Descartes (1637/1996) to Dennett (1991) have considered matrix-like scenarios involving an illusory body generated by an evil demon or a brain in a vat. Yet if we accept the notion that the body can be reduced to the homunculus, and the world is nothing more than a representation in our brain, how can we know for sure that we are not dreaming at this very moment?
If the phantom limb phenomenon forces us to ask whether our body can be reduced to neural maps in our brain, various psychopathologies, such as anorexia and body dysmorphic disorder, remind us that the body (which, of course, includes the brain) is never divorced from social contexts—from the very outset, we are thrown into a shared world. Essentially, not only is the image of our body shaped by social context, but rather, it has also been demonstrated that the body-schematic sensorimotor loop is shaped by social context (Durt, Tewes, & Fuchs, 2017). Indeed our body is the target of a gaze or the subject of others’ judgement as well as our own (Merleau-Ponty, 2012, p. 170):
Man does not ordinarily show his body, and, when he does, it is either nervously or with the intention to fascinate. It seems to him that the alien gaze that glances over his body steals it from him or, on the contrary, that the exhibition of his body will
Yochai Ataria, Shogo Tanaka, and Shaun Gallagher,
disarm and deliver the other person over to him, and in this case the other person will be reduced to slavery. Thus, modesty and immodesty take place in a dialectic of self and other that is the dialectic of master and slave. Insofar as I have a body, I can be reduced to an object beneath the gaze of another person and no longer count for him as a person. Or again, to the contrary, I can become his master and gaze upon him in turn. But this mastery is a dead end, since, at the moment my value is recognized by the other’s desire, the other person is no longer the person by whom I wanted to be recognized: he is now a fascinated being, without freedom, and who as such no longer counts for me. To say that I have a body is thus a way of saying that I can be seen as an object and that I seek to be seen as a subject, that another person can be my master or my slave, such that modesty and immodesty express the dialectic of the plurality of consciousnesses and that they in fact have a metaphysical signification.
Our bodies can be objects of desire, shame, or even disgust. Yet we are objectified not only by others, but also by ourselves; indeed, as the popularity of plastic surgery indicates, many of us are never really satisfied with our bodies. The body is the locus of the drama.
Frantz Fanon, a black psychiatrist and philosopher raised in the French colony of Martinique and the author of Black Skin, White Masks (2008), adds a critical perspective when depicting his experience as a black man among whites. Fanon’s description allows us to understand how the other’s gaze in a racist social world permeates our bodily experience, in particular the idea that social distortions can impinge on the body schema (p. 83):
And then the occasion arose when I had to meet the white man’s eyes. An unfamiliar weight burdened me. The real world challenged my claims. In the white world the man of color encounters difficulties in the development of his bodily schema. Consciousness of the body is solely a negating activity. It is a third person consciousness. The body is surrounded by an atmosphere of certain uncertainty. I know that if I want to smoke, I shall have to reach out my right arm and take the pack of cigarettes lying at the other end of the table. The matches, however, are in the drawer on the left, and I shall have to lean back slightly. And all these movements are made not out of habit but out of implicit knowledge. A slow composition of my self as a body in the middle of a spatial and temporal world—such seems to be the schema. It does not impose itself on me; it is, rather, a definitive structuring of the self and of the world—definitive because it creates a real dialectic between my body and the world . . .
While reading Fanon’s description, it becomes clear that the question of the body cannot be examined independently of our situatedness in the world and our most basic sense of subjectivity. Merleau-Ponty also highlights this close link between worldly situation and the body (2012, p. 431).
If the subject is in a situation, or even if the subject is nothing other than a possibility of situations, this is because he only achieves his ipseity by actually being a body and by entering into the world through this body. If I find, while reflecting upon the essence of the body, that it is tied to the essence of the world, this is because my existence as subjectivity is identical with my existence as a body and with the existence of the world, and because, ultimately, the subject that I am, understood concretely, is inseparable from this particular body and from this particular world. The ontological world and body that we uncover at the core of the subject are not the world and the body as ideas; rather, they are the world itself condensed into a comprehensive hold and the body itself as a knowing-body.
Note, however, that even if we embrace a radical embodied approach, emphasizing its coupling with the physical, social, and cultural environment, it would, of course, be a mistake to reject the role that the brain plays in the lived and bodily experience of subjectivity. Indeed, scholars have repeatedly demonstrated that there are complex dynamic links between neuronal plasticity (and sometimes localized brain damage), bodily function and dysfunction, and changes in the experience of self and the world.
This volume will not solve the mystery of the body. Instead, we will examine herein the question of the body by focusing on two concepts: body image and body schema. We can tentatively define body image as a ‘system of perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs pertaining to one’s own body’ and body schema as a ‘system of sensory-motor capacities that function without awareness or the necessity of perceptual monitoring’. It has been further suggested that a double dissociation exists between body schema and body image, although, essentially, ‘body image and body schema refer to two different but closely related systems’ (Gallagher, 2005, p. 24). That said, the goal of this volume is not merely to explore each one of these concepts, but also to improve our understanding of the complex relationship between them.
We hope to demonstrate that the concepts of body image and body schema enable us to build new bridges and generate innovative theories. Let us begin by locating the body image/body schema problem in the broader context of the body-in-the-brain versus the body-in-the-world debate.
Body-in-the-brain versus body-in-the-world
Following Merleau-Ponty, those who ascribe to the body-in-the-world approach reject the very notion of bodily representations, as Morris comments (Chapter 2, p. 28), ‘Why would you ever think of neurons as doing anything like abstractly representing positions to control, when they are clearly achieving control by virtue of being distributed over, moving around in, and working within, the very body and tentacles that are movingly touching things?’. In his 1953 lectures, Merleau-Ponty (2011) claimed that the body schema operates in the background; it does not involve a perceptual monitoring of the body. To grasp this notion, it is helpful to think about body schema in
terms of figure and ground—in our daily life, while operating fluently in the world, the body schema remains in the background as part of the pre-noetic structure of perception. However, it is far from being some kind of passive system; instead, we may think about body schema in terms of what Husserl called the ‘I can’. Essentially, body schema should be described in terms of knowing-how, a pragmatic kind of knowledge that allows our environment to become ready-to-hand. Continuing this line of thought, there is no need for a central system controlling the body (or better put: A body) within a Newtonian space, because the body itself (as a distributed sensory-motor system) is pragmatically oriented in space: ‘Our body is not primarily in space, but is rather of space’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2012, p. 149). Thus, according to this approach, the body image plays a secondary role with respect to motor control, although, as Tanaka suggests (Chapter 5), it may come to the fore when learning new movements or skills.
By contrast, those who ascribe to the body-in-the-brain approach concentrate on the role played by the brain in the body’s interactions with the surrounding environment and with others. As the body interacts with the world, afferent signals constantly flow from peripheral nerves to the brain and efferent signals are sent from the brain to control the body’s muscles and joints. The findings of both sensory and motor homunculi (or body maps) are the most classic expressions of the body-in-the-brain approach (Penfield & Rasmussen, 1950), demonstrating the relative independence of neural representation of the body from the physical body itself. Penfield shows that direct electrical stimulations to the somatosensory cortex cause subjective experiences of touch. This becomes even clearer when considering particular symptoms, such as phantom limbs, amputees’ experience of ‘a tingling feeling and a definite shape that resembles the somatosensory experience of the real limb before amputation’ (Melzack, 1990, p. 88). Thus, phantom sensations seem to correlate with neural activation in the somatosensory cortex. This body-in-the-brain view tends to replace the body that we live and experience with the complex neural representation of the body. In its most extreme version, this view enables neuroscientists to claim that ‘your own body is a phantom, one that your brain has temporarily constructed purely for convenience’ (Ramachandran & Blakeslee, 1998, p. 58). Although this approach acknowledges the sensory-motor activities of our body in the physical dimension, they are mostly considered in terms of internal computational models within the brain. According to this approach, the body schema is not a system that holistically incorporates the physical body acting in the world, but rather the sensory-motor representation mapped within the brain.
By emphasizing both the situatedness of the body as well as the role of the brain in relation to the lived body, we hope that this volume will take us another step toward a mature dialogue between the body-in-the-brain approach, which should not be without a body, on the one hand, and the body-in-the-world approach, which should not be without a brain, on the other.
Having located the body image/body schema debate in terms of a broader set of questions, it is time to dive into the very heart of the discussion. Given the importance of the case of deafferentation to our understanding of body schema and body image, as
well as the double dissociation between body image and body schema, let us begin by presenting the case of Ian Waterman.
Cases of deafferentation
Ian Waterman, sometimes referred to as IW in the scientific literature, became deafferented from the neck down at the age of 19. As a result of peripheral neuronopathy, he lost his sense of touch and proprioception below the neck, and initially he was unable to control his movements. After a lengthy rehabilitation, IW learnt how to do so mainly via visual and cognitive efforts (Cole, 1995).
Based on this finding, it has been suggested that IW’s body schema has been replaced by an enhanced body image, that is, a conscious visual awareness of his body (Gallagher, 2005, p. 52):
[I]f he [IW] is denied access to a visual awareness of his body’s position in the perceptual field, or denied the ability to think about his body, then, without the framework of the body image, the virtual body schema ceases to function—it cannot stand on its own . . . IW has substituted a virtual body schema—a set of cognitively driven motor processes. This virtual schema seems to function only within the framework of a body image that is consciously and continually maintained.
Frédérique de Vignemont (2018) believes that one of the most important questions concerning deafferentation is ‘whether more than thirty years later bodily control still requires the same effort’ (p. 148). Considering the case of Ginette Lizotte (GL), de Vignemont suggests an alternative explanation for this relative success with regard to movement among deafferented subjects ‘[who] can move in a relatively impressive manner’. Given this observation, she asks: ‘But in what sense is the body schema defective in these patients?’ de Vignemont argues that the body schema ‘is at least partially preserved in deafferentation’ (p. 147). In order to support this notion, she re-examines the role that vision plays in body-schematic processes: ‘The role of vision for the body schema is thus not unusual . . . it is merely more drastically important in the case of deafferented patients [who] . . . consciously exploit their body schema, as in conscious motor imagery.’ Furthermore, she argues that ‘although based on different weighting of information’, the body schema of deafferented patients relies ‘more on vision than before, but for all that, it is not “missing” ’ (p. 149).
Gallagher (2005) also explores the role of vision in body-schematic processes: ‘Visual sense is also a source of information vital to posture and movement.’ Thus, visual proprioception and visual kinaesthesis ‘are more directly related to the body schema and involve the tacit processing of visual information about the body’s movement in relation to the environment’. To be clearer, what we see in our daily life ‘automatically gets translated into a proprioceptive sense of how to move’. This notion echoes MerleauPonty’s ideas (1968, p. 134):
every vision takes place somewhere in the tactile space. There is double and crossed situating of the visible in the tangible and of the tangible in the visible; the two maps are complete, and yet they do not merge into one. The two parts are total parts and yet are not superposable.
Gallagher (2005) further stresses that although visual perception of the environment is important for body-schematic processes, in daily life, the ‘direct visual perception of one’s own body . . does not play a major role in motor and postural control’, and yet, ‘for IW it is the primary source of information about his body’ (p. 45). Indeed, IW ‘depends heavily on visual perception of his limbs and visual proprioception in order to control his movement’. He also argues that although usually there is ‘intermodal communication between proprioception and vision’, vision is nevertheless ‘not designed to take the place of somatic proprioception’. Essentially, in the case of IW, this intermodal communication is seriously disturbed. Gallagher (2005) concludes by saying that in IW’s case, some realignment toward visual and cognitive control of movement has taken place.1
de Vignemont (2018) stresses that while spending time with GL she almost ‘forgot that there was anything abnormal besides her wheelchair . . . She could cut her meat while having a normal discussion at lunch and even gesture with her knife and fork like everybody else, or so it seemed’.2 Note, however, that unlike GL, IW can walk. In that sense, GL’s situation is more similar to IW’s experience while driving, which he appears to find easier than walking: ‘The car seems to be an extension of the body schema’ (Gallagher & Cole, 1995, p. 386). Essentially, while driving, IW does not need to control his full body with his vision. Likewise, his hands are always in sight. As a result the observer can develop a feeling that IW is driving on ‘automatic pilot’. However, IW himself testifies that while driving he needs to think about how he holds the wheel and how much force he must invest in order to move the wheel one way or the other (and so on).
This ambiguity concerning the role of vision for body schema in deafferented subjects may reflect a long-standing confusion concerning body schema and body image. Gallagher stresses that the concepts of body image and body schema have been unclear from the very outset. Likewise, de Vignemont (2018) believes that ‘there is a lack of precise understanding of the functional role of the body schema as opposed to the body image and without clear definitional criteria . . they cannot play any explanatory role’. This lack of clarity and precision has motivated occasional calls to abandon the concepts. Perhaps, as de Vignemont herself suggests, ‘we should simply decide that
1 Indeed, some experimental evidence suggests that IW’s use of vision for motor control activates the ventral visual pathway in the brain (the visual stream that underpins object recognition) rather than the dorsal visual pathway that typically serves the motor system (Athwal et al., 1999).
2 It has been suggested (Cole, 2016; Forget & Lamarre, 1987) that GL is ataxic, meaning that she cannot drink from a cup normally; she chews her food by counting because she cannot feel much of her mouth; she cannot put her hand into a pocket or bring her hand to her mouth easily.
Introduction xix we are better off without them’ (p. 152). Others concur, from Conrad in his 1933 book (Das Körperschema. Eine kritische Studie und der Versuch einer Revision) to Berlucchi and Aglioti (2010) more recently. With this in mind, let us investigate the source of this confusion.
The source of conceptual confusion
Throughout the twentieth century, pivotal scholars regarded Head and Holmes’ (1911) paper as definitive in the study of body schema and body image. Given the important role of this study, some clarifications are necessary:
(1) Head and Holmes introduced the concept of body schema to explain the cognitive and somatosensory deficits of patients with cerebral lesions. They considered body schema an implicit frame for the entire body, referred to when recognizing the present posture or locating body parts.
(2) Head and Holmes argue that ‘postural recognition is not constantly in the central field of attention’. Thus, they suggest that ‘every recognizable change enters into consciousness already charged with its relation to something that has gone before, just as on a taximeter the distance is presented to us already transformed into shillings and pence’ (pp. 186–187). Basically, body schema is an implicit function underpinning our postural and motor control, and it rarely comes to our conscious attention.
(3) Head and Holmes claim that ‘image, whether it be visual or motor, is not the fundamental standard against which all postural changes are measured’ (p. 187). Thus, visual images of the body are distinguished from body schema.
Many philosophers and neuroscientists have relied heavily on Jacques Paillard’s interpretation of Head and Holmes’ study (Paillard, 2005, p. 103; citing Head & Holmes 1911,3 p. 212):
These authors suggested the distinction between a postural schema considered as ‘a combined standard against which all subsequent changes of posture are measured . . before the change of posture enters consciousness . . ’ and a body image as an ‘internal representation in the conscious experience of visual, tactile and motor information of corporal origin’.
Reading Paillard’s citation carefully, it is important to note that Head and Holmes (1911) never use the term ‘body image’ per se; likewise, they employ the concept of representation only in reference to the image: ‘The assumption of an imagined posture
3 Referring to the 1911 paper.
may be accompanied by representations of movement equivalent to the pictures of those who visualize strongly’ (1911, p. 187). In any case, Head and Holmes do not precisely define body image but do distinguish images of the body from what they define as schemata of the body.
Many believe that Paul Schilder (1886–1940) was at least partly responsible for the current confusion between body schema and body image (see Kalckert, Chapter 7). In his German book, published in 1923, entitled Body Schema (Das Körperschema), Schilder defines body schema as a ‘spatial image that one has from yourself’ (p. 2; emphasis added [translated by Kalckert, p. 126]). In his English-language book The Image and Appearance of the Human Body, published in 1935, Schilder defines the body image as the ‘picture of our own body which we form in our mind’ (p. 11). Yet on other occasions, Schilder mixes up his terminology: ‘We mean the body schema when we talk about the image of the own body, which is alive within us. It includes optical, kinaesthetic, and tactile elements, but it is not the sum of those, these achieve their true meaning only by its relationship to this body schema’ (Hartmann & Schilder, 1927, p. 666; emphasis added). In further cases, Schilder’s statements are even more confusing: ‘The image we have of our body, or, as it is also called the body schema or postural model of the body, is partially based on sensations and partially on representations and thoughts’ (Schilder, 1934, p. 314).
While reading Schilder’s definitions, one might suspect that he fails to properly distinguish between body schema and body image. However, we would like to offer a different perspective on Schilder’s work. Aside from the issue of conceptual distinctions, there is a question concerning how the brain, the body, and the world, including the social environment, are entangled in our everyday life. It seems that Schilder’s work succeeds, at least to some degree, in demonstrating how our bodily existence is integrated with the social environment during our daily life. Notwithstanding the double dissociation between body schema and body image, in everyday life, these two systems work together. In a sense, although his classification of body schema and body image is unclear, Schilder’ analysis remains faithful to our bodily experiences in the lifeworld.
Another source of confusion is the erroneous first translation of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. As Donald A. Landes, the translator of the new edition (2012), stresses (p. xlix):
Merleau-Ponty’s use of the term le schéma corporel introduces both historical and conceptual difficulties. Merleau-Ponty specifically rejects the interpretation of le schéma corporel as a representation or image . . Rather than following Schilder by writing image in French—or rather than adopting Lhermitte’s phrase l’image de notre corps (‘the image of our body’)—Merleau-Ponty maintains schéma.
Having understood the root of this confusion, let us examine the concept of double dissociation between body schema and body image more thoroughly.
Double dissociation
Based on an analysis of various pathological cases, both Paillard (1999) and Gallagher (2005) discern a double dissociation between body image on the one hand and body schema on the other: ‘It is possible . . . to find cases in which a subject has an intact body image but a dysfunctional body schema, and vice versa’ (Gallagher 2005, p. 24). For example, in some cases of unilateral personal neglect, a neuropsychological condition involving a deficit in attention to, and awareness of, one side of the body following damage to the contralateral cortex, we can detect evidence of an intact body schema (including controlled movement) together with the impairment of body image for the neglected side. In one such case, the patient pays no attention to the left side of her body and fails to dress that side, although there is no motor weakness on that side; for instance, she uses her left hand to dress her right side (Denny-Brown, Meyer, & Horenstein, 1952). As we saw in the case of IW, other examples indicate the opposite, that is, body schema deficit with an intact body image.
de Vignemont (2018) raises some doubts regarding the existence of a clear-cut double dissociation between body schema and body image. For instance, while the case of unilateral neglect is referenced to show the presence of body schema and the absence of body image, patients suffering from unilateral neglect are able to attend to the right side of their body. According to de Vignemont, this indicates that the body image is not completely absent, even if there is a deficit. Based on these observations, she argues that double dissociation in a strict sense does not exist: ‘Most bodily disorders do not lead to straightforward diagnosis in terms of either body image deficit or body schema deficit. These deficits of body schema and body image are often intermingled and clear cases of specific disruptions rarely found’ (p. 150; for further debate, see Havé, Priot, Pisella, Rode, & Rossetti, Chapter 15).
Keeping this in mind, Gallagher (Chapter 6) stresses that we need to distinguish between conceptual ambiguity on the one hand and ambiguity in the phenomena themselves on the other; ambiguity at the level of the phenomena is not an argument against the existence of dissociation between body schema and body image.
In a wider context, it seems that from the very outset, this ambiguity concerns the nature of the relationship between the perceived body and the acting body, in particular how these perspectives are interrelated in action. When we act in a habitual manner, we often do so without explicitly perceiving our own bodies, whereas we may need to explicitly focus on our bodies when asked to execute a novel action.
The same kind of tension can be found between the body-as-subject and the bodyas-object. Rather than avoiding it, Merleau-Ponty (1964, p. 162) encourages us to maintain what seems to be a structural ambiguity:
The enigma is that my body simultaneously sees and is seen. That which looks at all things can also look at itself and recognize, in what it sees, the ‘other side’ of its power
of looking. It sees itself seeing; it touches itself touching; it is visible and sensitive for itself.
According to Merleau-Ponty, this tension is necessary for our existence: ‘There is a human body when, between the seeing and the seen, between touching and the touched, between one eye and the other, between hand and hand, a blending of some sort takes place.’ If, however, this sensing–sensed structure collapses, the very essence of being human will lose its meaning. Moreover, should this subject–object structure collapse, meaning that we can no longer touch and be touched at the same time, this signals not merely the end of the human body but in fact the end of humanity: ‘Such a body would not reflect itself; it would be an almost adamantine body, not really flesh, not really the body of a human being (pp. 163–164).
The structure of this volume
This volume is divided into three parts. The first, ‘Theoretical clarification: body schema and body image’, defines these concepts and explores the possible relations between these systems. The second part, ‘Brain, body, and self’, attempts to understand how the body is represented in the brain and how this representation is developed into a sense of self. The third part, ‘Disorders, anomalies, and therapies’, explores the role of body schema and body image in different kinds of pathologies from phenomenological, cognitive, and neural perspectives.
The book opens with a chapter by Frédérique de Vignemont, Victor Pitron, and Adrian Alsmith, ‘What is the body schema?’ According to the authors, the body schema can be defined as a representation of the body for action. However, they ask: what does this statement really mean? Namely, what is the uniqeness of the body schema? Is it the type of information that it represents, or perhaps the function of the representation? In the second chapter ‘The space of the body schema’, David Morris focuses on the body schema as well, albeit adopting a non-representational approach. Given their representational approach, a fundamental problem encountered by de Vignemont, Pitron, and Alsmith concerns what seems to be our close interaction with the world in our everyday life, the sense of affordances, situatedness, and moods. While the orthodox neurocognitive approach to body representation leaves the world too far away, for Morris, this does not constitute a problem because he regards body schema itself as of space. Note that the role which Morris’ theoretical approach accords to body schema leaves little room for body image.
In the third chapter ‘Body schema dynamics in Merleau-Ponty’, Jan Halák explores the interaction between body schema and body image, drawing on the notes made by Merleau-Ponty (2011) for his 1953 lectures known as The Sensible World and the World of Expression. Halák describes the relations between the two in terms of figure (body image) and ground (body schema). Like Morris, Halák also supports a strong embodied non-representational approach; yet he nevertheless leaves a place in his theory
Introduction xxiii for the body image. Note that both Morris and Halák reject the concept of body image–body schema double dissociation.
Interestingly, de Vignemont, Pitron, and Alsmith, on the one hand, and Halák and Morris, on the other, would agree that body schema should be treated in terms of affordances. Yet, whereas the former adopt a strong representational approach, the latter argue that according to Merleau-Ponty, there is no need for representations, seemingly making many of the problems dealt with by de Vignemont, Pitron, and Alsmith non-issues. For instance, while de Vignemont, Pitron, and Alsmith focus on local representations of body parts, Merleau-Ponty considers the body a holistic system from the outset. Note, however, that if we choose to adopt the holistic approach, we may find it difficult to explain the strong link between localized brain damage and the dysfunction of body parts, and more generally different kinds of neuropathologies. Clearly the approach advanced by de Vignemont, Pitron, and Alsmith facilitates this sort of explanation.
In the fourth chapter ‘A radical phenomenology of the body’, Helena De Preester recognizes these problems and seeks to develop a theory that considers the strengths and weaknesses of both sides, that is, combining the body-in-the-brain approach with the body-in-the-world approach. To do so, she embraces Michel Henry’s radical phenomenology of the body. De Preester confronts what seems to be one of the most challenging problems faced by the representational approach—explaining the unity of the moving body. As we saw, de Vignemont, Pitron, and Alsmith are fully aware that embracing their own approach raises the following question: How does one experience and act with one’s body as an integrated whole rather than a collection of parts? De Preester tries to avoid this problem. She argues that the definition of body schema offered by Gallagher and Cole (1995) fails to solve this puzzle, and that as long as the body schema remains embedded in proprioception, the problem of the unity of the moving body remains unsolved. From this perspective, the Merleau-Pontyian approach, as presented by both Morris and Halák, is not sufficiently radical. By divorcing proprioception from body schema, Henry’s work allows her to confront this issue. According to Henry, body schema is responsible for unity of the transcendent body. The origin of this unity lies in the subjective body, which, in turn, is characterized by movement in the sense of original, immediate knowledge of movement. De Preester tries to bridge between Henry’s radical phenomenology of the body and current cognitive sciences by suggesting that, at least to some extent, we can think about the subjective body in terms of offline longterm body representations.
In the fifth chapter ‘Body schema and body image in motor learning’, Shogo Tanaka endeavours to provide a detailed account of the nature of relations between body schema and body image and to take the body schema–body image distinction a step further. Tanaka argues that motor learning demands a close dialogue between body image and body schema. Indeed, although the authors of the previous chapters in this volume ascribe to opposing philosophical approaches (body-in-the-brain versus body-in-theworld), they share a belief in the primacy of body schema over body image. Thus, they all agree that compared with the body schema body image plays a minor role in our
daily lives. Merleau-Ponty seems to support this approach: ‘Ordinary experience shows that, in imitating others, in learning to walk, in becoming familiar with an environment, what occurs cannot be explained by the notion that there is first an intellectual act of “knowing” rules, maps, or words and then a move to use them’ (1964, p. 96). Bearing this in mind, Tanaka suggests that body image nonetheless plays a fundamental role in most processes of motor learning; hence, any theory that seeks to explain what it is like to be-in-the-world should provide a detailed account of how body image is involved in our everyday activities.
In the sixth chapter ‘Reimagining the body image’, Gallagher accepts the coconstruction model (Pitron & de Vignemont, 2017), which posits a functional distinction, yet strong interaction, between body schema and body image. Indeed, if one replaces the word ‘representation’ in the following sentence with ‘systems’, it seems that de Vignemont, Pitron, and Alsmith would agree to some extent with Gallagher: ‘The two types of body representations [systems] are thus functionally distinct, but their construction is partly based on their interactions, which allow them to minimize discrepancies between them as much as possible.’ In his chapter, Gallagher tries to respond to several objections that have been voiced against the body image–body schema distinction over the years. The main objection is as follows: ‘We should not take body schema and body image to be disconnected systems, even if they are distinguishable.’ Indeed, by reading the different chapters in the first part of this volume, it is difficult to find any theoretical support for a strict or absolute double dissociation approach. Gallagher admits that he relies heavily on rare cases such as IW, yet he believes that: (a) the fact that IW’s case is rare is not an argument against the body image–body schema double dissociation; and (b) even if we accept that the figure-ground concepts describe the body image–body schema dialogue quite accurately in our everyday life, this does not undermine the possibility of double dissociation.
Reading the first part of this volume, the following question arises: Does the current debate derive from our inability to define body schema and body image properly? Accordingly, it is appropriate to close the first part with a historical perspective on the current debate. In his chapter ‘The body in the German neurology of the early twentieth century’, Andreas Kalckert examines the history of German neurology in the early twentieth century, demonstrating that from the very outset, the concepts of body schema and body image were not well defined. Kalckert closes his chapter with the following observation: ‘Fortunately or unfortunately, these discussions resemble strikingly the discussions we have today. We face unclear definitions, different interpretations, now and a hundred years ago’ (Chapter 7, p. 112).
In the second part, ‘Brain, body, and self’, we consider both body schema and body image from the perspectives of related research fields, such as cognitive neuroscience, experimental psychology, developmental science, phenomenology, and robotics. Tool use is clearly one of the most important issues for our understanding of body schema. Therefore, it is natural to open the second part of this volume with a chapter by Daniele Romano and Angelo Maravita concerning the question of ‘Plasticity and tool use in the body schema’. Romano and Maravita explore the process via which
tools become embodied. In general, when we learn to use a new tool, we develop a new way of interacting with the surrounding space. This malleable relationship between our body and the surrounding environment is reflected in the plastic nature of our brain. Within our brain, changes related to tool use are not limited to spatial processing but are also linked to sensory-motor information processing which in turn has the potential to transform how we are embedded within the environment. Romano and Maravita’s findings seem to fit perfectly with how Merleau-Ponty (1964, p. 178) regards body schema: ‘Our organs are no longer instruments; on the contrary, our instruments are detachable organs.’ Indeed, our body lives as a system of knowing-how within the surrounding space and its sensory-motor capacity and flexibly extend into this space through tool use. Thus, body schema is itself of space.
In the second chapter ‘Triadic body representations in the human cerebral cortex and peripheral nerves’, Noriaki Kanayama and Kentaro Hiromitsu explore how both body schema and body image are represented in the brain. They reconsider how the entire neural system, including peripheral nerves, constitutes body representation. Drawing on Schwoebel and Coslett (2005), they reject the traditional dyadic taxonomy of body schema and body image. Instead, they present a triadic taxonomy of body schema (sensory-motor representation of the body), body structural description (topological representation of body parts and whole), and body semantics (lexical meanings of body parts). Kanayama and Hiromitsu further propose that the neural basis of the new triadic taxonomy lies in three information streams in the visual cortical areas: the ventral stream corresponding to body semantics, the ventro-dorsal stream corresponding to body structural description, and the dorso-dorsal stream corresponding to body schema. Their proposal preserves the concept of traditional body schema, but the concept of body image is now categorized into the topological-perceptual aspect and the lexical-conceptual aspect. Here we notice that their proposal partially corresponds to the taxonomy of the body image originally presented by Gallagher (2005), that is, body percept, body affect, and body concept. Kanayama and Hiromitsu’s recategorization of body image seems to focus on the difference between body percept and body concept.
Concerning the taxonomy of body representations, Matej Hoffmann tackles the problem in a comprehensive manner from the perspective of robotics. In his chapter ‘Body models in humans, animals, and robots’, Hoffmann asks: How is the physical body represented in animals, humans, and robots in terms of information processing? He proposes to classify body representations by locating them on axes such as fixed versus plastic; amodal versus modal; explicit versus implicit; centralized versus distributed; and so on. Hoffmann argues that the human body is more centrally controlled in terms of movement than invertebrates, such as the octopus, which have greater freedom in peripheral movements. However, the same condition alters the human capacity for conscious and dexterous manipulation of objects in a detailed manner, as is evident in tool use. Although Hoffmann focuses on the fixed and amodal nature of body models in robots, by contrast, this shows the plasticity and multimodality of human body representations in the organic brain. According to Hoffmann, it is possible to say that humans inevitably represent the body in the brain, that is, the central nervous system
