Research interest

Bodily awareness

The body is a material entity located in space and time in the same way as a rock, a tree or a bird. But do we perceive and experience our body like those other objects? It is precisely because we assume that we are aware of our body differently from other objects that it raises many questions. But what makes it unique? The most intuitive answer is that it bears a special relation to the self, and to self-awareness. However, although introspectively familiar, it is hard to exactly pinpoint the nature of this specific relation.

Keywords:

  • touch, pain, interoception

  • body representations, body schema, sensorimotor theories

  • embodiment, rubber hand illusion, prosthesis, tool use

  • sense of bodily ownership, immunity to error, agency, Bodyguard hypothesis.

Peripersonal space

Where is the dividing line between you and the world? You might have thought that this is a clean-cut, binary question with a simple answer: your skin is the boundary, with the self on one side and the rest of the world on the other. Peripersonal space shows that the division is messy, and the boundary is blurrier than you might have thought. Research in cognitive neuroscience indicates that we process the space surrounding our body in a specific way, both for protecting our body from immediate danger and for interacting with our immediate environment. Though it bears some relations with the social notion of personal space, with the sensorimotor notion of reaching space, and with the spatial notion of egocentric space, there is something quite unique about peripersonal space and the special way we represent it.

Keywords:

  • multisensory, vision, audition, touch, impact prediction,

  • action, sensorimotor theories of perception, plasticity, tool use

  • self-location, here-ness, sense of presence, sense of reality

  • self-defence, danger perception, protective behaviour

Affective perception

Many sensory experiences somehow involve an affective dimension in addition to their sensory dimension. The crucial question is at which level the affective dimension kicks in. According to a conservative account, sensory experiences give rise to emotions, desires, and evaluative judgments, but they themselves are not affectively loaded. However, it has been recently proposed that there may be more to sensory experiences than what the conservatives assume, including evaluative, affective and motivational components. It may then be that some sensory experiences can be endowed with features that are normally distinctive of emotional experiences. But what could it mean for one to see something positively or negatively?

Keywords:

  • pain, fear, danger perception

  • evaluative content, evaluative attitude

  • motivational role, affordance, imperative theory