Affiliations: Centre de Neurosciences de la Cognition and Department
of Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada
Note: [] Address for correspondence: Claude M.J. Braun, PhD, Full
professor, Centre de Neurosciences Cognitives UQAM, C.P 8888,
Succ. Centre-Ville, Montréal, Québec, Canada, H3C 3P8. Tel.: +1 514 987
3000 (4814); Fax: +1 514 987 8952; E-mail: [email protected]; URL:
http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/r31210/home.html
Abstract: The psychic tonus model (Braun and colleagues, 1999, 2002, 2003,
2006) states that the left hemisphere is a "booster" of internal experience
and behavior in general, and that the right hemisphere is a "dampener".
Twenty-five patients with a "positive" extreme disturbance of body schema
(somatoparaphrenia) and 37 patients with a "negative" disturbance of body
schema (autotopagnosia or Gerstmann's syndrome), all following a unilateral
parietal lesion, were found in the literature and were analyzed to test
predictions from Braun's "psychic tonus" model. As expected, patients with a
positive syndrome had a right hemisphere lesion significantly more frequently,
and those with a negative syndrome had a left hemisphere lesion significantly
more frequently. Thus the psychic tonus model of hemispheric specialization,
previously supported with regard to psychomotor baseline, libido,
talkativeness, memory, auditory and visual perceptual tonus, now incorporates
the tonus of representation of the body (body schema) in the parietal
lobes.
