Awareness of One's Own Body Parts
Very early, children learn to identify their own body parts in "show
me" requests. They can point to salient features when requested,
such as their nose, eyes, or hair. Awareness of the location and function
of our own body parts seems so basic that we may take it for granted.
However, there are certain brain lesions that interfere with this
awareness. For example, in autotopagnosia, generally associated with
lesions of the parietal lobe,
patients lose conscious awareness of their own body parts. If the
patient is asked to point to his nose, ear, knee, or other body part,
the patient cannot do so, because he doesn't know where it is. Yet
the patient can identify a body part correctly if the doctor points
to it and asks the patient what is this. Thus, semantic knowledge
is not lost, only topographical knowledge. At our laboratory, we tested
the dolphin's awareness of its own body parts. We assigned gestural
symbols to each of nine body parts, rostrum, mouth, melon, side, belly,
dorsal fin, pectoral fin, genitals, and tail. We then asked the dolphin
to use a named body part in four different ways: to touch an object,
to toss an object, or to shake the body part, or simply to display
it. The dolphin was adept in all cases. It could use the same body
part in different ways, such as touching or tossing and object with
its dorsal fin, or shaking its dorsal fin or displaying it. It could
also use different body parts in the same way, for example tossing
objects with any of the nine body parts. The dolphin thus demonstrated
conscious awareness and conscious control of its body parts. Most
impressive was the ability of the dolphin to use named body parts
in novel ways such as touching a basket with its belly or tossing
and objects with its genital area.
Herman, L. M., Matus, D., Herman, E. Y K., Ivancic, M., & Pack, A. A. (2001). The bottlenosed dolphin's (Tursiops truncatus) understanding of gestures as symbolic representations of body parts. Animal Learning and Behavior, 29 (3), 250-264.
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