Also known as palihaptic phenomenon, palinaesthesia, and perseverative somaesthetic sensation. The term tactile polyaesthesia comes from the Latin verb tangere (to touch), and the Greek words polus (much, many), and aisthanesthai (to notice, to perceive). It is used to denote an illusory tactile phenomenon in which a single tactile stimulus is at first perceived and localized properly, and then perceived again, a few seconds later, in one or more different parts of the body. The Austrian-American neurologist Paul Ferdinand Schilder (1886-1940) gives the example of a woman who, when touched on the right side near the breast, perceives the stimulus successively on the shoulder, near the elbow, on the upper part of the leg, and on the foot, whereby the duration of the intervals between these various tactile sensations is of the order of seconds. Pathophysiologically, tactile polyaesthesia is associated primarily with discrete lesions affecting the parietal cortex. Conceptually, the phenomenon is analogous to *palinopsia (i.e. the persistence or recurrence of visual images), and * palinacusis (i.e. the persistence or paroxysmal recurrence of auditory percepts). Tactile polyaes-thesia tends to be classified as a * reduplicative phenomenon.
References
Critchley, M. (1953). The parietal lobes. London: Edward Arnold & Co.
Head, H., Holmes, G. (1911). Sensory disturbances from cerebral lesions. Brain, 34, 102-254.
Schilder, P. (1923). Das Körperschema. Ein Beitrag zur Lehre vom Bewusstsein des eigenen Körpers. Berlin: Verlag von Julius Springer.
Dictionary of Hallucinations. J.D. Blom. 2010.