Impaired visual hand recognition in preoperative patients during brachial plexus anesthesia: importance of peripheral neural input for mental representation of the hand.

Anesthesiology 114(1):126-34 (2011) PMID 21169795

Perceptual illusions described in healthy subjects undergoing regional anesthesia (RA) are probably related to short-term plastic brain changes. We addressed whether performance on an implicit mental rotation task reflects these RA-induced changes in body schema brain representations. Studying these changes in healthy volunteers may shed light on normal function and the central mechanisms of pain.