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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Perception Science
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1462934

Women show enhanced proprioceptive target estimation through visual-proprioceptive conflict resolution

Provisionally accepted
  • Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    To form a unified and coherent perception of the organism's state and its relationship with the surrounding environment, the nervous system combines information from various sensory modalities through multisensory integration processes. Occasionally, data from two or more sensory channels may provide conflicting information. This is particularly evident in experiments using the mirrorguided drawing task and the mirror-box illusion, where there is conflict between positional estimates guided by vision and proprioception. This study combined two experimental protocols (the mirrorbox and the mirror-guided drawing tasks) to examine whether the learned resolution of visuoproprioceptive conflicts in the mirror-guided drawing task would improve proprioceptive target estimation of men and women during the mirror-box test. Our results confirm previous findings of visual reaching bias produced by the mirror-box illusion and show that this effect is progressively reduced by improvement in the mirror drawing task performance. However, this was only observed in women. We discuss these findings in the context of possible gender differences in multisensory integration processes as well as in embodiment.

    Keywords: multisensory integration, Visuo-proprioceptive conflict, embodiment, Mirror Box Illusion, Mirror drawing, Star-tracing, reaching movements, visuomotor adaptation

    Received: 10 Jul 2024; Accepted: 20 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Melo, Landeira-Fernandez and Krahe. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Thomas Eichenberg Krahe, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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