Both sides of the mirror, the self as other and the other as a self, Marte Roel Lesur Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Date: 14/02/24, 15:00
Speaker: Marte Roel Lesur, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Title: Both sides of the mirror, the self as other and the other as a self
Abstract: In a medieval fable, the sun goes on a journey to find its source. The moon is left weeping without her lover’s warm gaze. The sun’s identity, devotedly offered in the mirror of moonlight, is sought elsewhere. Indeed mirrors, once among alchemists’ best guarded secrets, have carried powerful capacities since antiquity. One’s reflection is a window into how others perceive us: a rupture between ourselves as subject and object of experience. In this survey, mirrors become an allegory for the complexities of selfhood. From the lenses of psychology, neuroscience, art, and technology, the multisensory dimensions of the internal, the external, and the mutual, are delved into. From obsidian relics to dark magic algorithms capturing one’s essence to render immersive mirages, we will take a walk into the obscure space beyond our reflection.
Does voluntary auditory spatial attention exist in depth plane?, Kiichi Naka,Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo, Japan
Date: 29 January 2024
Speaker: Kiichi Naka,Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo, Japan
Title: Does voluntary auditory spatial attention exist in depth plane?
Abstract:
We hear our surroundings in everyday life. From the surroundings where various sounds are, we voluntarily control selective attention to sounds, that is endogenous auditory spatial attention, to achieve our current goals. Many researchers have reported nature of endogenous auditory spatial attention in a horizontal plane, however, there is little research focusing on a depth plane in endogenous auditory spatial attention.
In this seminar, I mainly discuss the existence of endogenous auditory spatial attention in the depth plane. I show an experimental result that indicates we can control auditory spatial attention in the depth plane. Moreover, the potential for the application of auditory spatial attention characteristics in the depth plane is mentioned.
Perception of extra body parts & body part weight. Denise Cadete, PhD student at the Body Representation Lab, Birkbeck University of London
Date: 22 November 2023
Speaker: Denise Cadete, PhD student at the Body Representation Lab, Birkbeck University of London
Title: Perception of extra body parts & body part weight
Abstract: In everyday life, we have a constant and reliable experience of our own bodies. However, the perception of our body can be instantly altered using multisensory illusions or Virtual Reality. This flexibility is not restricted to the human body configuration, with recent studies showing we can also feel extra body parts. In the first part of the presentation, I will present the six finger illusion and what our findings tell us about how supernumerary body parts are represented in the brain. We will make a case for the independence and flexibility of how we represent extra body parts, also aiming to determine what are its limits.
In the second part, I will introduce our studies looking into how we perceive the weight of body parts. Perception of object’s weight has been studied for over a century, however little is known about weight perception of body parts. A recent study of our lab showed that we systematically and dramatically underestimate hand weight by 49% (Ferrè et al., 2023), an effect we called weightedness, for how light we experience body parts, on Earth. We further investigated how perceived hand size changed felt hand weight, and in another study we looked at perceived hand volume. We will propose a model of constant density in the perception of body part weight.
The Gender Perspective in Tech Research, Lídia Arroyo Prieto, Gender and ICT Research Group, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)
Date: 25 October 2023
Speaker: Lídia Arroyo Prieto, Gender and ICT Research Group, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)
Title: The Gender Perspective in Tech Research
Abstract: The seminar have the goal to introduce the key issues on the incorporation of the gender perspective in tech research. It is also an invitation to the interdisciplinar dialogue between social science and technological and nature science.
Biography:
Lídia Arroyo is a researcher at Gender and ICT Research Group (Internet Interdisciplinary Institute- Open University of Catalonia) and she is also an Associate Professor at Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). She is the Principal Researcher of the project “Open Data Portal & Research on the incidence of occupational segregation on COVID-19 prevalence from a gender gender intersectional approach”. and she has coordinated the transnational study “Skills and Organizational Elements for Social Digital Inovation” from +RESILIENT project. She is also involved as a researcher in European projects on gender and science (GenPORT, ACT, EFFORTI). She has been a visiting research fellow at Área de Género, Sociedad y Políticas (FLACSO-Argentina) and the Fondation Travail-Univeristé (FTU-Namur)- Unversity of Namur (Belgium). Her researches, based on mixed methods, focus on gender, work and ICT and prevention of gender violence in young people. In 2011, she was awarded the Young Sociologist Prize from the Associació Catalana de Sociologia- Institut d’Estudis Catalans. Currently, she is the representative of data group of the Gender Equality Observatory (Generalitat de Catalunya). Community Manager of the following EU Projects GenPORT (https://twitter.com/GenderPORTal), ACT (https://twitter.com/ACTonGender) and CASPER (https://twitter.com/CasperGender).
Movement sonification for body perception
Date: 26 May 2023 at 2 pm
Speaker: María Concepción Valdez Gastelum, 2nd-year Ph.D. Student (CICESE, MX)
Title: Movement sonification for body perception
Abstract:
Recently the body of work in interactive sonification has made the compelling argument that understanding how to sonify the characteristics of movement is important and can alter one’s own perception (Knudsen et. al., 2017, Frid et. al., 2018). The characteristics of movements can be classified into two types according to their dynamics and qualities. Movement dynamics are the most commonly used characteristics and are related to the shape and trajectory of the movement, including examples like position, size, acceleration, and direction. In contrast, movement qualities refer to movement’s temporal and expressive aspects, including fluidity, contraction index, force, and velocity.
In this seminar, I will be presenting a case study where we explored the use of dynamics-based sonification to alter body and flexibility perception during yoga practice. Additionally, I will discuss the development of a movement-tracking algorithm designed to detect movement qualities during dance practice, with the aim of identifying abnormalities in movement behavior that may indicate concerns related to body image.
Touch for Material Recognition and Affective Communication
Dr. Hsin-Ni Ho, Kyushu University, Japan
Title: “Touch for Material Recognition and Affective Communication”
Touch is essential to our lives, playing crucial roles in both material recognition and affective communication. In recent years, haptic information presentation has gained traction in the fields of Human-Computer Interaction and Virtual Reality. In this presentation, I will discuss my research on utilizing touch to enhance material recognition and facilitate affective communication. My aim is to provide the audience with a fundamental understanding of haptics and spark interest in further research within this domain.
Exploring Multisensory Extended Reality Approaches for Autistic Children: Improve Well-Being and Assess Auditory Perception – Copy
Valentin Bauer, Paris-Saclay University, CNRS, LISN, VENISE team Title: Exploring Multisensory Extended Reality Approaches for Autistic Children: Improve Well-Being and Assess Auditory Perception
Cognitive and neural adaptations related to physical exercise
Date: 3 February 2023 Speaker: Daniel Sanabria Lucena, Universidad de Granada Abstract: This talk discusses evidence of the neural and cognitive functioning during physical exercise, together with an in-depth review of the alleged effects of regular exercise on cognitive performance in healthy individuals across the life span. In the first part of the talk, physical exercise at moderate-high intensity is framed as a strain state that induces cognitive and neural adaptations, similar to that occurring during drowsiness, at the opposite end of the arousal continuum. Behavioural and neural data, both from univariate and multivariate EEG analyses, will show how the brain adapts to increase physical demands and arousal. When repeated over long periods of time, sessions of moderate-to-high physical exercise are thought to induce permanent adaptations at the neural level, that results in improved cognition. The next part of the talk will review that literature, showing that the current evidence does not support the claims regarding the cognitive benefits of the regular practice of physical exercise. Bio: Daniel Sanabria is full professor at the Faculty of Psychology, University of Granada, and leads the Human Brain and Cognition research group at the Mind, Brain & Behavior research center. The group is interested in different topics, from the cognitive, neural and phenomenological underpinnings of strain states such as high intensity physical exercise, to the study of mood variability. They employ behavioral measures of performance and subjective experience, together with electroencephalography. If you are interested in giving a talk please write an email to: lab.imbody@gmail.com.
Characterization of EEG neural markers in the sensorimotor cortex when using movement sonification for walking ability
Date: 25th January 2023Speaker: Marta Matamala-Gomez Abstract: Little is known about responses to periodic auditory stimuli with periodicities found in human rhythmic behavior (0.5-5 Hz). However, some studies show a tonic synchronization response in the delta range, taken at the Cz-electrode, with a maximum response at 2 Hz, when using periodic auditory stimulation (drum sounds and clicks sound stimuli (Will & Berg, 2007). Recently, entrainment models of rhythmic motor behavior investigated intrinsic rhythmicity and frequency coupling in neural systems (Thaut et al., 1997). According to this, it is shown that a repetition rate frequency between 1-8 Hz is the most relevant to induce a human repetitive sensorimotor behavior (Large et al., 2009; Will & Berg, 2007). Further, a recent study developed a validated new approach to define the brain responses associated with biological motion perception by showing a point-light walker moving at a pace of 2.4 Hz and using EEG frequency ragging to measure the brain response coupled to that pace (Cracco et al., 2022 (preprint)). In this study, the authors identified brain responses coupled to the biological movement of walking at 1.2 Hz (half walking cycle), corresponding to the rate at which the individual dots repeated their trajectory, and at 2.4 Hz, that was related to the full walking cycle movement (Cracco et al., 2022 (preprint)). Aim: To investigate which frequency rate between 1 and 8 Hz is the more appropriate to reach a peak of brain entrainment when observing a repetitive video walking stimulus coupled to a footstep audio stimulus displayed at the same frequency. Methods: The study is composed of three different factors: (i) audio stimuli, (ii) video stimuli, (iii) audio + video stimuli. Each factor contains six different conditions (i) audio stimuli: normal footstep sound vs. random footsteps sound set at different frequencies: Slow frequency (0.5 Hz), Normal frequency (2 Hz), Fast frequency (3.5 Hz). (ii) Video stimuli: normal walking movement vs. random walking movements set at Slow frequency (0.5 Hz), Normal frequency (2 Hz), Fast frequency (3.5 Hz). (iii) Audio + video stimuli: normal walking movement + normal footsteps sound vs. random walking movement + random footsteps sound, set at different frequencies, Slow frequency 0.5 Hz, Normal frequency 2 Hz, Fast frequency 3.5 Hz. Each condition will be repeated four times in a randomized order. Hypothesis: We expect higher brain entrainment responses with the audio (footsteps stimuli) + video (walking movement) set at 2 Hz. Then we expect to show the same level of entrainment in audio and video conditions set at 2 Hz rate frequency, and in the audio-motor association condition at 2 Hz rate frequency. Biography:Since April 2002, Dr. Marta Matamala-Gomez is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Barcelona, under the Beatriu de Pinòs program. She is currently working on investigating the impact of sonification on the human brain, and how can be applied in neurorehabilitation. She obtained her Ph.D. in Biomedicine (research line: cognitive neuroscience) in 2017 at the University of Barcelona under the supervision of Professors Maria V.Sánchez-Vives and Mel Slater. During her Ph.D. period, she investigated the use of immersive virtual reality in neurorehabilitation and its impact on neuroplasticity in healthy and clinical populations with motor and chronic pain disorders. Her PhD work was graded with excellent-cum laude. The results from two of the main studies of her thesis work lead to the development of a new virtual reality rehabilitation software on the route to commercialization by Virtual Body works S.L. Product: iCORTEX®. On 5 December 2017, the Academic Committee of the Biomedicine program granted permission to display the international doctorate certification. After her Phd, she moved to Italy for four years (2018-2022) at the University Milano Bicocca as a post-doctoral researcher where she was investigating the use of virtual embodiment through multisensory integration techniques in virtual reality to update mental body representation in clinical and healthy populations. In detail, the first year, she was collaborating with the University of Pavia on an Italian multicentre National project “The Telerehabilitation Italian Network for Care Continuity”. Here she also introduced the use of new visual feedback techniques for the modulation of pain perception in patients suffering from chronic migraines. Later, thec andidate won another research grant public competition for the award of one grant for research activities on the theme “New technologies to support multidimensional rehabilitation paths for the management of chronicity”, where she participated in two different national projects for the implementation and design of telerehabilitation strategies using new technologies. Further, she collaborated with the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Milan in investigating the usability and user experience of a VR-based system directed to modify the mental body representation of patients with anorexia nervosa through a full virtual body illusion. She also participates in National and International conferences as an invited speaker to talk about the use of virtual embodiment and sensory techniques for clinical applications: EFIC 2022, Dublin, Ireland; BRNet 2022, Sion, Switzerland; INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON UPDATES ON TELEMEDICINE AND TELESURGERY, SAUDI ARABIA. IEEE SMC 2022, Prague, Czech Republic; I Congreso Internacional de Afrontamiento Activo del Dolor Crónico, Valladolid, Spain; LXXIV Reunión Anual de la SEN 2022, Sevilla, Spain. During her post-doctoral period, she mentored master and PhD students on the experimental design and development of their research studies. If you are interested in giving a talk please write an email to: lab.imbody@gmail.com.
Wearable-Based Measurement of Skin Conductance: Issues and Applications
Date: Jan 18, 2023 Speaker: Susanna Spinsante. Università Politecnica delle Marche Abstract: Starting from some background information about the physiology of skin conductance, and the information encoded in skin conductance signals, the talk will present the wearable devices currently available to acquire this signal, and the associate measurement issues. Finally, an overview of applications exploiting the use of wearables and the processing of skin conductance to understand human reactions and behaviour, will be provided. Biography: Susanna Spinsante is currently an Associate Professor in Electrical and Electronic Measurements at the Information Engineering Department of Università Politecnica delle Marche (Ancona, Italy). Her research interests are in the field of electronic measurements, instrumentation and metrological issues in IoT and wearable applications. She is IEEE Senior Member and Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurements. If you are interested in attending, or would like to give a talk please write an email to: lab.imbody@gmail.com.