Plasticity and awareness of bodily distortion

Knowledge of the body is filtered by perceptual information, recalibrated through predominantly innate stored information, and neurally mediated by direct sensory motor information. Despite multiple sources, the immediate prediction, construction, and evaluation of one’s body are distorted. The origins of such distortions are unclear. In this review, we consider three possible sources of awareness that inform body distortion. First, the precision in the body metric may be based on the sight and positioning sense of a particular body segment. This view provides information on the dual nature of body representation, the reliability of a conscious body image, and implicit alterations in the metrics and positional correspondence of body parts. Second, body awareness may reflect an innate organizational experience of unity and continuity in the brain, with no strong isomorphism to body morphology. Third, body awareness may be based on efferent/afferent neural signals, suggesting that major body distortions may result from changes in neural sensorimotor experiences. All these views can be supported empirically, suggesting that body awareness is synthesized from multimodal integration and the temporal constancy of multiple body representations. For each of these views, we briefly discuss abnormalities and therapeutic strategies for correcting the bodily distortions in various clinical disorder

Wearable performance

This is the post-print version of the article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2009 Taylor & FrancisWearable computing devices worn on the body provide the potential for digital interaction in the world. A new stage of computing technology at the beginning of the 21st Century links the personal and the pervasive through mobile wearables. The convergence between the miniaturisation of microchips (nanotechnology), intelligent textile or interfacial materials production, advances in biotechnology and the growth of wireless, ubiquitous computing emphasises not only mobility but integration into clothing or the human body. In artistic contexts one expects such integrated wearable devices to have the two-way function of interface instruments (e.g. sensor data acquisition and exchange) worn for particular purposes, either for communication with the environment or various aesthetic and compositional expressions. 'Wearable performance' briefly surveys the context for wearables in the performance arts and distinguishes display and performative/interfacial garments. It then focuses on the authors' experiments with 'design in motion' and digital performance, examining prototyping at the DAP-Lab which involves transdisciplinary convergences between fashion and dance, interactive system architecture, electronic textiles, wearable technologies and digital animation. The concept of an 'evolving' garment design that is materialised (mobilised) in live performance between partners originates from DAP Lab's work with telepresence and distributed media addressing the 'connective tissues' and 'wearabilities' of projected bodies through a study of shared embodiment and perception/proprioception in the wearer (tactile sensory processing). Such notions of wearability are applied both to the immediate sensory processing on the performer's body and to the processing of the responsive, animate environment. Wearable computing devices worn on the body provide the potential for digital interaction in the world. A new stage of computing technology at the beginning of the 21st Century links the personal and the pervasive through mobile wearables. The convergence between the miniaturisation of microchips (nanotechnology), intelligent textile or interfacial materials production, advances in biotechnology and the growth of wireless, ubiquitous computing emphasises not only mobility but integration into clothing or the human body. In artistic contexts one expects such integrated wearable devices to have the two-way function of interface instruments (e.g. sensor data acquisition and exchange) worn for particular purposes, either for communication with the environment or various aesthetic and compositional expressions. 'Wearable performance' briefly surveys the context for wearables in the performance arts and distinguishes display and performative/interfacial garments. It then focuses on the authors' experiments with 'design in motion' and digital performance, examining prototyping at the DAP-Lab which involves transdisciplinary convergences between fashion and dance, interactive system architecture, electronic textiles, wearable technologies and digital animation. The concept of an 'evolving' garment design that is materialised (mobilised) in live performance between partners originates from DAP Lab's work with telepresence and distributed media addressing the 'connective tissues' and 'wearabilities' of projected bodies through a study of shared embodiment and perception/proprioception in the wearer (tactile sensory processing). Such notions of wearability are applied both to the immediate sensory processing on the performer's body and to the processing of the responsive, animate environment

Low-fi skin vision: A case study in rapid prototyping a sensory substitution system

We describe the design process we have used to develop a minimal, twenty vibration motor Tactile Vision Sensory Substitution (TVSS) system which enables blind-folded subjects to successfully track and bat a rolling ball and thereby experience 'skin vision'. We have employed a low-fi rapid prototyping approach to build this system and argue that this methodology is particularly effective for building embedded interactive systems. We support this argument in two ways. First, by drawing on theoretical insights from robotics, a discipline that also has to deal with the challenge of building complex embedded systems that interact with their environments; second, by using the development of our TVSS as a case study: describing the series of prototypes that led to our successful design and highlighting what we learnt at each stage

Robotic tele-existence

Tele-existence is an advanced type of teleoperation system that enables a human operator at the controls to perform remote manipulation tasks dexterously with the feeling that he or she exists in the remote anthropomorphic robot in the remote environment. The concept of a tele-existence is presented, the principle of the tele-existence display method is explained, some of the prototype systems are described, and its space application is discussed

Malleability of the self: electrophysiological correlates of the enfacement illusion

Self-face representation is fundamentally important for self-identity and self-consciousness. Given its role in preserving identity over time, self-face processing is considered as a robust and stable process. Yet, recent studies indicate that simple psychophysics manipulations may change how we process our own face. Specifically, experiencing tactile facial stimulation while seeing similar synchronous stimuli delivered to the face of another individual seen as in a mirror, induces 'enfacement' illusion, i.e. the subjective experience of ownership of the other’s face and a bias in attributing to the self, facial features of the other person. Here we recorded visual Event-Related Potentials elicited by the presentation of self, other and morphed faces during a self-other discrimination task performed immediately after participants received synchronous and control asynchronous Interpersonal Multisensory Stimulation (IMS). We found that self-face presentation after synchronous as compared to asynchronous stimulation significantly reduced the late positive potential (LPP; 450-750 ms), a reliable electrophysiological marker of self-identification processes. Additionally, enfacement cancelled out the differences in LPP amplitudes produced by self- and other-face during the control condition. These findings represent the first direct neurophysiological evidence that enfacement may affect self-face processing and pave the way to novel paradigms for exploring defective self-representation and self-other interactions

Sensorimotor Representation Learning for an “Active Self” in Robots: A Model Survey

Safe human-robot interactions require robots to be able to learn how to behave appropriately in spaces populated by people and thus to cope with the challenges posed by our dynamic and unstructured environment, rather than being provided a rigid set of rules for operations. In humans, these capabilities are thought to be related to our ability to perceive our body in space, sensing the location of our limbs during movement, being aware of other objects and agents, and controlling our body parts to interact with them intentionally. Toward the next generation of robots with bio-inspired capacities, in this paper, we first review the developmental processes of underlying mechanisms of these abilities: The sensory representations of body schema, peripersonal space, and the active self in humans. Second, we provide a survey of robotics models of these sensory representations and robotics models of the self; and we compare these models with the human counterparts. Finally, we analyze what is missing from these robotics models and propose a theoretical computational framework, which aims to allow the emergence of the sense of self in artificial agents by developing sensory representations through self-exploration.Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001659Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001659Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001659Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001659Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001659Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001659Projekt DEALPeer Reviewe

The implications of embodiment for behavior and cognition: animal and robotic case studies

In this paper, we will argue that if we want to understand the function of the brain (or the control in the case of robots), we must understand how the brain is embedded into the physical system, and how the organism interacts with the real world. While embodiment has often been used in its trivial meaning, i.e. 'intelligence requires a body', the concept has deeper and more important implications, concerned with the relation between physical and information (neural, control) processes. A number of case studies are presented to illustrate the concept. These involve animals and robots and are concentrated around locomotion, grasping, and visual perception. A theoretical scheme that can be used to embed the diverse case studies will be presented. Finally, we will establish a link between the low-level sensory-motor processes and cognition. We will present an embodied view on categorization, and propose the concepts of 'body schema' and 'forward models' as a natural extension of the embodied approach toward first representations.Comment: Book chapter in W. Tschacher & C. Bergomi, ed., 'The Implications of Embodiment: Cognition and Communication', Exeter: Imprint Academic, pp. 31-5

Multimodality and mathematical meaning-making: blind students’ interactions with symmetry

In this paper, we examine the claim that mathematical cognition is embodied by exploring the co-ordinations of multimodal resources which characterise dialogues between researchers and blind mathematics students. We begin by considering approaches to understanding the relationship between perception and conception in different academic fields, notably philosophy and neuroscience. This leads us to adopt an embodied perspective on mathematical cognition, with roots in the phenomenology of merleau-ponty. We illustrate how the lived-in bodies of the two blind students interviewed impinged upon their mathematical activities as they worked on a series of task involving symmetrical figures and geometrical transformations – and how the practices of the student with no visual memories differed from those of the student who had more recently lost his sight