Publications related to Imagined own-body transformations during passive self-motion

Task-driven neural network models predict neural dynamics of proprioception: Neural network model weights

Axel Bisi, Alberto Silvio Chiappa, Alexander Mathis, Alessandro Marin Vargas

Proprioception tells the brain the state of the body based on distributed sensors in the body. However, the principles that govern proprioceptive processing from those distributed sensors are poorly understood. Here, we employ a task-driven neural network ...

Zenodo2024

Robotically-induced auditory-verbal hallucinations: combining self-monitoring and strong perceptual priors

Olaf Blanke, Nathan Quentin Faivre, Fosco Bernasconi, Pavo Orepic, Melissa Faggella

Background. Inducing hallucinations under controlled experimental conditions in nonhallucinating individuals represents a novel research avenue oriented toward understanding complex hallucinatory phenomena, avoiding confounds observed in patients. Audito ...

2024

Temporal aspects of feature integration in vision

Lukas Vogelsang

To fully comprehend visual perception, we need to necessarily understand its temporal dimension. Our visual environment is highly dynamic, requiring the processing and integration of temporal signals in order to make sense of it. Many processes, such as th ...

EPFL2024

Bodily self-consciousness as a framework to link sensory information and self-related components of episodic memory: behavioral, neuroimaging, and clinical evidence

Nathalie Heidi Meyer

The recollection of sensory information and subjective experience related to a personal past event depends on our episodic memory (EM). At the neural level, EM retrieval is linked with the reinstatement of hippocampal activity thought to recollect the sens ...

EPFL2023

Out-of-body illusion induced by visual-vestibular stimulation

Bruno Herbelin, Olaf Blanke, Florian Lance, Sophie Jacqueline Andrée Betka, Hsin-Ping Wu, Estelle Nakul

Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are characterized by the subjective feeling of being located outside one's physical body and perceiving one's own body from an elevated perspective looking downwards. OBEs have been correlated with abnormal integration of bod ...

Cell Press2023

EEG signature of breaks in embodiment in VR

Ronan Boulic, Ricardo Andres Chavarriaga Lozano, Bruno Herbelin, José del Rocio Millán Ruiz, Olaf Blanke, Fumiaki Iwane, Thibault Serge Mario Porssut

The brain mechanism of embodiment in a virtual body has grown a scientific interest recently, with a particular focus on providing optimal virtual reality (VR) experiences. Disruptions from an embodied state to a less- or non-embodied state, denominated Br ...

2023

Towards Novel Evaluation Methods for Social Dialog Systems

Ekaterina Svikhnushina

Language has shaped human evolution and led to the desire to endow machines with language abilities. Recent advancements in natural language processing enable us to achieve this breakthrough in human-machine interaction. However, introducing conversational ...

EPFL2023

Data Transformation in the Processing of Neuronal Signals: A Powerful Tool to Illuminate Informative Contents

Mohammad Ali Shaeri

Neuroscientists seek efficient solutions for deciphering the sophisticated unknowns of the brain. Effective development of complicated brain-related tools is the focal point of research in neuroscience and neurotechnology. Thanks to today's technological a ...

2023

Accessible Soft Robotics Education with Re-configurable Balloon Robots

Yi-Shiun Wu, Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Kieran Daniel Gilday

Soft robotics requires effective tools to educate the next generation of engineers and researchers. Stemming from a lack of universally accepted principles for education and with high barriers to entry in terms of fabrication and hardware, education to dat ...

IEEE2023

Hierarchical processing underpins competition in tactile perceptual bistability

Andrea Ferrario

Ambiguous sensory information can lead to spontaneous alternations between perceptual states, recently shown to extend to tactile perception. The authors recently proposed a simplified form of tactile rivalry which evokes two competing percepts for a fixed ...

SPRINGER2023

Breathing affects self-other voice discrimination in a bodily state associated with somatic passivity

Olaf Blanke, Giulio Rognini, Nathan Quentin Faivre, Hyeongdong Park, Pavo Orepic

A growing number of studies have focused on identifying cognitive processes that are modulated by interoceptive signals, particularly in relation to the respiratory or cardiac cycle. Considering the fundamental role of interoception in bodily self-consciou ...

WILEY2022

Changing Finger Movement Perception: Influence of Active Haptics on Visual Dominance

Ronan Boulic, Bruno Herbelin, Loën Boban

The perception of one’s own body is a complex mechanism that can be disturbed by conflicting sensory information and lead to illusory (mis-) perceptions. Prominent models of multisensory integration propose that sensory streams are integrated according to ...

2022

Wearable Haptics for Somatosensory Perception and Self-consciousness

Atena Fadaeijouybari

Recent research has highlighted the crucial role of the processing of somatosensory signals involving the torso for global aspects of Bodily Self Consciousness (BSC), i.e., the experience of the conscious "I" as embodied and localized within bodily space. ...

EPFL2021

Modulation of Bodily Self-Consciousness by Self and External Touch

Olaf Blanke, Masayuki Hara, Roy Salomon, Noriaki Kanayama

The full body illusion (FBI) is a bodily illusion based on the application of multisensory conflicts inducing changes in bodily self-consciousness (BSC), which has been used to study cognitive brain mechanisms underlying body ownership and related aspects ...

2021

Interoception and Empathy Impact Perspective Taking

Bruno Herbelin, Olaf Blanke, Jane Aspell, Lukas Heydrich

Adopting the perspective of another person is an important aspect of social cognition and has been shown to depend on multisensory signals from one's own body. Recent work suggests that interoceptive signals not only contribute to own-body perception and s ...

Frontiers Media2021

The perspectives of mapping and monitoring of the sense of self in neurosurgical patients

Bruno Herbelin, Olaf Blanke, Giannina Rita Iannotti, Hyeongdong Park, Pavo Orepic, Sixto Luis Alcoba Banqueri, Sophie Jacqueline Andrée Betka

Surgical treatment of tumors, epileptic foci or of vascular origin, requires a detailed individual pre-surgical workup and intra-operative surveillance of brain functions to minimize the risk of post-surgical neurological deficits and decline of quality of ...

SPRINGER WIEN2021

Cogno-Vest: A Torso-Worn, Force Display to Experimentally Induce Specific Hallucinations and Related Bodily Sensations

Hannes Bleuler, Olaf Blanke, Oliver Alan Kannape, Masayuki Hara, Kenny Jeanmonod, Atena Fadaeijouybari, Jevita Potheegadoo

Recent advances in virtual reality and robotic technologies have allowed researchers to explore the mechanisms underlying bodily aspects of self-consciousness which are largely attributed to the multisensory and sensorimotor processing of bodily signals (b ...

2022

The Dimension of the Body in Higher Education: Matrix of Meanings in Students’ Diaries

Simon Nessim Henein, Ramiro Tau

In this paper, we attempt to show some consequences of bringing the body back into higher education, through the use of performing arts in the curricular context of scientific programs. We start by arguing that dominant traditions in higher education repro ...

2022

Repeat stereotactic radiosurgery for progressive vestibular schwannomas after previous radiosurgery: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Constantin Tuleasca, Adrien Jean Régis Maurice Hilaire

Vestibular schwannomas (VS) are slow-growing intracranial extraaxial benign tumors, developing from the vestibular part of the eight cranial nerves. Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) has now a long-term scientific track record as first intention treatment fo ...

SPRINGER2021

Common and distinct brain networks of autoscopic phenomena

Olaf Blanke, Lukas Heydrich, Eva Blondiaux

Objective Autoscopic phenomena (AP) are illusory own body reduplications characterized by the visual perception of a second own body in extrapersonal space, and include three main forms: autoscopic hallucination (AH), heautoscopy (HAS) and out-of-body-expe ...

2021