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The physiological regulation of skin temperature can be modulated not only by autonomic brain regions, but also by a network of higher-level cortical areas involved in the maintenance of a coherent representation of the body. In this study we assessed in healthy participants if the sensorimotor changes taking place during motor adaptation to the lateral displacement of the visual scene induced by wearing prismatic lenses (prism adaptation, PA), and the aftereffects, after prisms’ removal, on the ability to process spatial coordinates, were associated with skin temperature regulation changes. We found a difference in thermoregulatory control as a function of the direction of the prism-induced displacement of the visual scene, and the subsequent sensorimotor adaptation. After PA to rightward displacing lenses, with leftward aftereffects (the same directional procedure efficaciously used for ameliorating left spatial neglect in right-brain-damaged patients) the hands’ temperature decreased. Conversely, after adaptation to neutral lenses, and PA to leftward displacing lenses, with rightward aftereffects, the temperature of both hands increased. These results suggest a lateral asymmetry in the effects of PA on skin temperature regulation, and a relationship between body spatial representations and homeostatic control in humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptation to optical prisms displacing the visual scene laterally is a widely investigated instance of visuo-motor plasticity, also because prism adaptation (PA) has been extensively used as a treatment for right-brain-damaged patients suffering from left spatial neglect. The lateral visual displacement brought about by prisms, as indexed by a pointing error in the direction of the displacement, is progressively corrected through repeated pointings: after prism removal, a shift in the direction opposite to the prism-induced deviation occurs in visual, proprioceptive, and visuo-proprioceptive straight-ahead tasks (aftereffects, AEs). The cerebellum and the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) are key components of the bilateral cerebral network subserving the AEs, and the reduction of the pointing error during prism exposure in PA. We report the experimental study of a patient with bilateral occipital and left cerebellar damage, who showed a preserved reduction of the pointing errors to rightward displacing prisms, but not the leftward AEs in the proprioceptive straight-ahead task; instead, visual-proprioceptive and visual AEs were preserved. Anodal transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) over the left PPC restored the leftward proprioceptive AEs, and anodal tDCS over the left cerebellum abolished the rightward deviation. Conversely, stimulation over the right PPC or the right cerebellum was ineffective. These results provide novel evidence for neuromodulatory effects of tDCS on defective AEs, through the stimulation over dedicated cortical regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]