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i_mBODY Lab

Interactive Multisensory Body-centred Experiences
at the Intersection of Neuroscience & Technology

imbodylab

Perception of extra body parts & body part weight. Denise Cadete, PhD student at the Body Representation Lab, Birkbeck University of London

Date: 22 nov 2023
Speaker: Lídia Arroyo Prieto, Gender and ICT Research Group, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)

Title: Perception of extra body parts & body part weight
Speaker: Denise Cadete, PhD student at the Body Representation Lab, Birkbeck
University of London
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.

It’s a Kind of Magic: Exploring Multisensorial Modulation of the Sense of Self through Bodily Movements and Action Observation in Depersonalisation

Date: 30th November 2022 Speaker: Angelia Caparco, Co-Embodied Self (CEL) Lab of the Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Lisbon, Portugal Abstract: In ordinary daily