It is clear that the human brain recognizes the feel of tools held in hands as well as the body

We can detect the position of an object even if it is not in direct contact with the body. For example, hitting an object with a stick in your hand gives you an idea of where the object touched the bar, even if you were not looking.

The research team of Dr. Luke Miller and others of Claude Bernard Lyon University 1 in France, in a research paper published in the academic journal `` Nature ' ' on September 12, 2018 , tools have expanded the sense of the human body, It was shown that the position where the wooden stick touched the object was specified precisely.

Tools are treated as extensions of the body

Based on the findings, Dr. Miller and colleagues further explored "how does the human brain perceive the timing and location of contact with an object when such a phenomenon occurs?" `` Tools are treated as an extension of the body, and brain areas involved in sensing contact with the body perform the same function even if they have tools , '' December 16, 2019 in the academic journal `` Current Biology '' And published a research paper.

The research team carried out 400 experiments in which 16 subjects held a 1-meter wooden stick, touched the stick twice with the subject invisible, and compared whether the touched position was the same . Subjects correctly sensed where they touched the wooden stick with an average accuracy of 96.4%. The results of this experiment are consistent with the results of the study published in September 2018.

Sensory functions extend beyond the nervous system to the tools used

In addition, during the experiment, the brain activity of the subject was measured using an electroencephalograph. As a result, it became clear that the same neural mechanisms as those used to sense contact with the skin were used in the primary somatosensory cortex and the occipital parietal cortex. Upon contact with the wooden stick, the vibration is sensed by the skin's mechanoreceptors "patini bodies", and nerve signals are transmitted to the primary somatosensory cortex. Computer simulations of the activity of the patini body showed that information about the contact position of the wooden stick was extracted within 20 milliseconds.

A series of research results show that the function of human somatic sensation extends beyond the nervous system to the tools used, and a method of designing a prosthesis that supplements the shape and function of the deficient part of the body with artificial objects Application to is expected. `` We show that insensitive objects can be a means of sensing information from the outside world and transmitting it to the somatosensory cortex, '' said Scott Frey, a cognitive neurologist and prosthetic limb designer at the University of Missouri. It is evaluated .

Sources of article:
https://www.newsweekjapan.jp/stories/world/2020/01/post-92074.php