Adequately localizing pain is crucial to protect the body against physical damage and react to the stimulus in external space having caused such damage. Accordingly, it is hypothesized that nociceptive inputs are remapped from a somatotopic reference frame, representing the skin surface, towards a spatiotopic frame, representing the body parts in external space. This ability is thought to be developed and shaped by early visual experience. To test this hypothesis, normally sighted and early blind participants performed temporal order judgment tasks during which they judged which of two nociceptive stimuli applied on each hand's dorsum was perceived as first delivered. Crucially, tasks were performed with the hands either in an uncrossed posture or crossed over body midline. While early blinds were not affected by the posture, performances of the normally sighted participants decreased in the crossed condition relative to the uncrossed condition. This indicates that nociceptive stimuli were automatically remapped into a spatiotopic representation that interfered with somatotopy in normally sighted individuals, whereas early blinds seemed to mostly rely on a somatotopic representation to localize nociceptive inputs. Accordingly, the plasticity of the nociceptive system would not purely depend on bodily experiences but also on crossmodal interactions between nociception and vision during early sensory experience.

中文翻译：

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测试伤害感受的外在感受功能：视觉体验在塑造伤害感受输入的空间表示中的作用。

充分定位疼痛对于保护身体免受物理损害以及对引起这种损害的外部空间的刺激做出反应至关重要。因此，假设伤害性输入从代表皮肤表面的体位参考系向代表外部空间中身体部位的空间位架重新映射。人们认为这种能力是通过早期的视觉体验来发展和塑造的。为了验证这一假设，通常视力正常的人和早期失明的参与者执行了时间顺序判断任务，在此过程中，他们判断施加在每只手背上的两种伤害性刺激中，哪一种被认为是最先交付的。至关重要的是，以双手交叉姿势或身体中线交叉姿势执行任务。虽然早期的盲人不受姿势的影响，相较于非交叉状态，正常视线参与者的表现在交叉状态下有所下降。这表明伤害感受性刺激会自动重新映射为会干扰正常视力个体的体细胞分裂的时空表征，而早期盲人似乎主要依赖于生理反应性表征来定位伤害性输入。因此，伤害感受系统的可塑性将不仅仅取决于身体的经历，而且还取决于在早期感官体验期间伤害感受和视觉之间的交叉峰相互作用。这表明伤害感受性刺激会自动重新映射为会干扰正常视力个体的体细胞分裂的时空表征，而早期盲人似乎主要依赖于生理反应性表征来定位伤害性输入。因此，伤害感受系统的可塑性将不仅仅取决于身体的经历，而且还取决于在早期感官体验期间伤害感受和视觉之间的交叉峰相互作用。这表明伤害感受性刺激会自动重新映射为会干扰正常视力个体的体细胞分裂的时空表征，而早期盲人似乎主要依赖于生理反应性表征来定位伤害性输入。因此，伤害感受系统的可塑性将不仅仅取决于身体的经历，而且还取决于在早期感官体验期间伤害感受和视觉之间的交叉峰相互作用。