Biomechanical modification ahd sense motor control of body posture after plastic surgery

Plastic surgery offers a quite unique window on abrupt and permanent modifications of a human's body schema. Its impact is comparable to amputations or other severe injuries, with the evident advantage from the experimenter's (and patient's) point of view that it is planned, allowing longitudinal studies and quantification of the weight and distribution of modified bodily masses (e.g., weight of the prosthesis). One potential drawback is that modifications due to (aesthetic) plastic surgery are often too little to be revealed by motor control tasks, making it difficult to measure the time course of body schema readaptation. The aim of our study is measuring the capability of the body schema to readapt to significant and abrupt changes, such as the distribution of mass centers, and in particular to assess what is the time course of such re-adaptation.