Early Brain Damage Affects Body Schema and Person Perception Abilities in Children and Adolescents with Spastic Diplegia

Raw data from the Journal article: Early Brain Damage Affects Body Schema and Person Perception Abilities in Children and Adolescents with Spastic Diplegia

Early brain damage leading to cerebral palsy is associated to core motor impairments and also affects cognitive and social abilities.
In particular, previous studies have documented specific alterations of perceptual body processing and motor cognition that are
associated to unilateral motor deficits in hemiplegic patients. However, little is known about spastic diplegia (SpD), which is
characterized by motorial deficits involving both sides of the body and is often associated to visuospatial, attentional, and
social perception impairments. Here, we compared the performance of a sample of 30 children and adolescents with SpD
(aged 7-18 years) and of a group of age-matched controls with typical development (TD) at two different tasks tapping on
body representations. In the first task, we tested visual and motor imagery abilities as assessed, respectively, by the object-based
mental rotation of letters and by the first-person transformations for whole-body stimuli. In the second task, we administered
an inversion effect/composite illusion task to evaluate the use of configural/holistic processing of others’ body. Additionally, we
assessed social perception abilities in the SpD sample using the NEPSY-II battery. In line with previously reported visuospatial
deficits, a general mental imagery impairment was found in SpD patients when they were engaged in both object-centered and
first-person mental transformations. Nevertheless, a specific deficit in operating an own-body transformation emerged. As
concerns body perception, while more basic configural processing (i.e., inversion effect) was spared, no evidence for holistic
(i.e., composite illusion) body processing was found in the SpD group. NEPSY-II assessment revealed that SpD children
were impaired in both the theory of mind and affect recognition subtests. Overall, these findings suggested that early brain
lesions and biased embodied experience could affect higher-level motor cognition and perceptual body processing, thus
pointing to a strict link between motor deficits, body schema alterations, and person processing difficulties.

本数据集源自期刊论文《早期脑损伤影响痉挛性双瘫（spastic diplegia，SpD）儿童与青少年的身体图式（body schema）与他人感知（person perception）能力》

早期脑损伤引发的脑瘫（cerebral palsy）不仅与核心运动障碍相关，还会对认知与社交能力造成负面影响。既往研究已证实，偏瘫患者存在与单侧运动缺损相关的特异性感知加工与运动认知异常。但学界针对痉挛性双瘫的了解仍较为有限——此类疾病以双侧肢体运动缺损为核心特征，且常伴随视觉空间、注意力及社交感知障碍。

本研究纳入30名7至18岁的痉挛性双瘫儿童与青少年，以及年龄匹配的典型发育（typical development，TD）对照组，通过两项任务探究其身体表征能力：第一项任务分别采用字母客体心理旋转范式与全身体刺激的第一人称转换范式，测试视觉表象与运动表象能力；第二项任务采用倒置效应（inversion effect）/复合错觉（composite illusion）任务，评估个体对他人身体的构型/整体加工策略。此外，本研究通过NEPSY-II成套量表对痉挛性双瘫样本的社交感知能力进行评估。

与既往报道的视觉空间缺损特征一致，痉挛性双瘫患者在客体中心与第一人称心理转换任务中均表现出普遍的心理表象损伤；但进一步分析显示，其仅在自体肢体转换操作中存在特异性缺损。

在身体感知层面，痉挛性双瘫组保留了较为基础的构型加工能力（即倒置效应），但未表现出整体（复合错觉）身体加工的相关证据。

NEPSY-II评估结果显示，痉挛性双瘫儿童在心理理论（theory of mind）与情绪识别分测验中均存在缺损。

综上，本研究结果提示，早期脑损伤与受限的具身经验（embodied experience）可能会影响高级运动认知与身体感知加工，进而揭示了运动缺损、身体图式异常与他人感知困难之间的紧密关联。