“The main finding of the study is that it has enabled us to confirm that tactile sensations are initially located unconsciously in anatomical coordinates, but they reach our awareness only when the brain has formed an image of their origin in the spatial coordinates, external to the body,” explained Salvador Soto-Faraco. The coexistence of different spatial reference frames in the brain has been known for some time. So has the fact that confusions between them may result in some cases, such as when we invert the usual anatomical position of some body parts (e.g. when crossing our arms over the body midline). “The brain sorts out problems of this kind rapidly, in a matter of tenths of a second. To do so, however, it has to integrate information arriving in formats that are quite disparate”, Sotoa-Faraco added. “Our research has helped us understand how this process works and how the brain manages spatial realignment when faced with conflict”, he concluded.