IMPERCEPTION FOR THE POSITION OF THE EYELIDS ON ONE SIDE.

Abstract

THE concept of the body schema in its present form originated from the investigations of Head and Holmes (1911-12) into sensory disturbances from cerebral lesions. They showed that appreciation of posture and passive movement requires a " standard against which all subsequent changes of posture are measured before they enter consciousness." For this fundamental standard they introduced the term schema or postural model of the body. They came to postulate a similar schema for the localization of stimuli applied to the body surface. These schemata they supposed to be formed by the past sensory impressions. Claude (1909) assumed that mistakes in localization and estimation of posture can be caused by the disturbance of certain " mnestic centres for the topoand kinesthetic impressions and for the representations of the different parts of the body." Jones (1910) suggested an amnestic disturbance of the association between the sensory perceptions and the " autosomatognostic group of memory feelings " for his cases of allochiria. Pick, who had spoken of " spatial images of the body " (1908), adopted the term schema and stated that these schemata together with the optic image of the body are the essential framework for the consciousness of the body (1915). Earlier theories (Hartmann, Mach, Wernicke, Wundt) of the knowledge one has of one's own body have been summarized by Zingerle (1913). Schilder (1923, 1935) extended the concepts of Head and Holmes and of Pick. His " body schema " (or " body image ") is a complex built up by many somatic factors, among which the postural, kinmsthetic and tactile, as well as the optic and vestibular impressions are the most significant. The body schema contains the representations of the different parts of the body and their spatial relations to each other. The idea of the body schema has proved indispensable for the understanding of a variety of neurological and psychopathological conditions. In this paper it is proposed to deal with the group of body schema disorders that is most widely known as " anosognosia." This term was originally introduced by Babinski (1914) for cases of left hemiplegia who were completely unaware of and even denied the paralysis, no matter how often one had tried to convince 191 coright.