Washington (AFP)
Artists born without arms who paint with their feet have areas of their brain dedicated to each of their toes, which is not found in people with arms, reported Tuesday researchers in the United Kingdom.
The authors of the study, from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, worked with artists Tom Yendell and Peter Longstaff, two of the three great artists using their feet in the country.
Each part of the body corresponds to a specific area in a region of the brain called the somatosensory cortex. The areas of each finger are close together, as shown by the MRIs of nine volunteers with arms who participated in the study.
The researchers touched each volunteer's finger and saw these areas light up. On the other hand, when they touched the toes of these participants, no structured reaction appeared in their brains.
The same experiment on the toes of the two artists showed the reverse individual zones for each toe, corresponding to their order in the foot: a kind of brain map of the toes.
"It was a fun experience to do, but it has serious implications," one of the authors, Daan Wesselink, told AFP.
A question arises indeed: have artists developed these specialized brain areas on the toes to compensate for the absence of hands? Or do these zones exist at birth for everyone, and do they disappear because they are not used?
The interest of these works is to improve the techniques of robotic prostheses, and their integration with the brain map of the body.
"Whether it's the hand or the toe, or any body part, we seek to better understand how the brain overcomes various changes," says lead author Harriet Dempsey-Jones. The idea is to help the brain to better "control each finger of a prosthesis".
A university laboratory is working on the development of additional fingers or additional pairs of robotic arms, such as tools.
© 2019 AFP