Neural Basis of Body Integrity Dysphoria

Human body received information that comes from visual, tactile, proprioception, the vestibular and the interoceptive systems from inside and outside of the body and it has its own internal access to perceive itself and the surroundings. Cerebral body representation has been used to be able to perceive one’s own state and be able to relate oneself and the others. Different body representations (i. e. body schema, body image, superficial schema, and others) were modeled in terms of defining the portrait of various bodily disorders (i. e. phantom limbs, somatoparaphrenia, autoscopic phenomena) and understand the way of body awareness by these individuals. The desire for amputation and its variations attracted most of the researcher to examine the causes for alienated or foreign limb syndrome (xenomelia). Lately, a controversial and riveting term was introduced to the literate as Body Integrity Dysphoria which was characterized as an insistent desire to amputate the functioning limbs without a delusional or psychotic symptoms. Current meta-analysis aimed to understand the possible neural basis of the BID by focusing on six published papers that are including magnetic resonance imaging techniques with the use of ALE conjunction analysis. Findings of the study is discussed accordingly to the cerebral activities in the related areas shown by previous studies. Lastly, suggestions and the limitation of the analysis is presented in the conclusion part for future research purposes. Keywords: Body representation, Body integrity dysphoria (BID), right superior parietal cortex (rSPL), left premotor cortex(lPMCv), Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Rubber hand illusion.