Observations placeholder
Damasio, Professor Antonio - Asomatognosia
Identifier
011006
Type of Spiritual Experience
None
Background
For ease of reference I have grouped this under Professor Damasio even though it is about one of his patients
A description of the experience
Professor Antonio Damasio – The Feeling of What Happens
As we have seen, the proto-self depends on varied representations of organism state regarding internal milieu, viscera, vestibular stimulation, and musculoskeleton frame. I am tempted to think that not all of these representations have equal value in the implementation of the proto self, and I suspect that the internal milieu and the visceral representations are of primary import. A patient, LB, whom I studied some years ago in collaboration with my colleague Steven Anderson, reinforced this idea.
The patient has a condition known as asomatognosia which literally means “lack of recognition of the body”. Patient LB had sustained a small stroke involving a select part of the right somatosensory cortices. Specifically, the secondary sensory area was damaged. This was not enough to cause any permanent sensory or motor defect, nor for that matter, emotional abnormality. But as can be the case with relatively small vascular lesions, the patient developed seizures arising from the scarred tissue in the lesion. A remarkable effect was produced in some of the seizure episodes; the patient reported being unable to feel her body, by which she meant, for certain, that she had no awareness of the muscle mass in her limbs and torso