self-concept and own body perception

Date: 5 July 2023 at 2 pm
Speaker: Dr. Pawel Tacikowski, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Title: “The link between self-concept and own body perception”
Abstract
What makes us who we are? Is it the body we wake up in every morning and use as a “vehicle” throughout our daily activities? Or is it a collection of thoughts and beliefs about ourselves as individuals with specific skills, traits, and social identities? If it is a combination of the two, how would a unified sense of self emerge from such a fusion of conscious beliefs and bodily perceptual experience? In this talk, I will present a series of behavioral experiments where we used multisensory “body-swap” illusions to show that the perception of one’s own body dynamically shapes the content of self-concept, including gender identity. I will discuss the implications of these findings and future directions.

Bio
Pawel Tacikowski will soon start his Assistant Professor position at the University of Coimbra. He previously worked as an Assistant Project Scientist in the Cognitive Neurophysiology Laboratory at UCLA and as a postdoc in the Brain, Body, and Self Laboratory at Karolinska Institute. Dr. Tacikowski’s research focuses on how the human brain constructs a sense of self. His research aims to facilitate the development of new diagnostic tools and therapies for the atypical sense of self.