The course aims to convey notions and concepts required to understand the neurophysiological basis of the dyad body schema – body image (The Sense of Self, The Sense of Bodily Ownership, The Peripersonal Space), and the role of action representations in motor cognition (i.e., in action planning, motor imagery and action understanding during social interaction). These basic principles will be crucial to explore the role of the plasticity of body and motor representations in neurological and neuropsychological disorders.

1. Taxonomy of body representations.

1.1. Body Schema. 1.2. Body Image. 1.3. The multisensory nature of body representations and the Bodily Self. 1.4 Personal and Peripersonal Space. 1.5. Sense of Ownership and Sense of Agency.

2. Disorders of body representations.

2.1 Peripheral deafferentation. 2.2. Phantom Limbs and Mirror Therapy. 2.3. Autotopoagnosia and Digital Agnosia. 2.4. Neglect, Somatoparaphrenia and Anosognosia for hemiplegia. 2.5. Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID). 2.6. Body representations and eating disorders.

3. Motor representations.

3.1. Predictions in motor control. 3.2. The visuo-motor neural networks. 3.3. The common coding theory (motor imagery, motor planning and action observation). 3.4. Hierarchy in motor representations and social interactions. 3.5. The impact of experience on motor representations (along the life-span, in athletes and in the case of peripheral limitation).

4. Disorders of motor planning.

4.1. Apraxia. 4.2. Basal ganglia and Hypokinetic Disorders (Parkinsonism). 4.3. Hyperkinetic Disorders (Dystonia, Huntington disease, Tourette syndrome). 4.4. Cerebellar Dysfunctions. 4.5. Prefrontal regions and motor control.

5. Rehabilitation and Biofeedback

5.5. Rehabilitation and neural plasticity. 5.2. Motor Imagery in rehabilitation. 5.3. Action observation therapy along the life-span.

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Knowledge and understanding: The student must demonstrate to have acquired the necessary knowledge about the neurophysiological basis of the body representations, the motor planning and, of the primary motor hypo- and hyperkinetic disorders.

Applying knowledge and understanding: The student must demonstrate possession of the ability to use neurophysiological knowledge to describe the body representations for the sake of motor planning.

Making judgments: The student will have acquired the essential ability to judge the need for the neuropsychological assessment of specific motor disorders discussed during the course.

Communication skills: The student must acquire the ability to use specific terminology in the field of neurophysiology in his/her communication.

Learning Skills: The student will have acquired the essential ability to read reports and descriptions of the neuroscientific aspects of the dyadic interaction between body schema and body image, as well as, of the motor planning and, of the primary motor hypo- and hyperkinetic disorders.

The teaching material prepared by the lecturer in addition to recommended textbooks (such as for instance slides, lecture notes, exercises, bibliography) and communications from the lecturer specific to the course can be found inside the Moodle platform › blended.uniurb.it