VIRTUAL
TogethernesS

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER
at INCC - paris Cité

about me

I am a former digital project manager, who conducted a PhD project on togetherness in virtual spaces funded by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship.

After a postdoctoral position working on ShareSpace project at EuroMov DHM, I am now working on the LackSocialTouch project at INCC Paris Cité.

My research interests are diverse, ranging from philosophy to social neurosciences. I'm especially interested about how social rhythms influences our inner rhythms.

scientific activities

[2026- 2027] - LackSocialTouch: ANR project investigating vicarious touch and its neural correlates at INCC, Paris Cité.

[2023 - 2025] - SHARESPACE: European project investigating the role of kinematic transformation for fostering social bonding in mixed reality at EuroMov DHM, Montpellier

[2019 - 2024] - VIRTUAL-SYNC: PhD project investigating the definitions and components of togetherness (i.e., empathy and synchrony) and their implementation in human-computer interactions

[2018 - 2019] - POLLAR (EIT Health Project): European project to evaluate the impact of air quality on seasonal allergy, sleep and work and improve the well-being of healthy and clinical populations.  

[2017 - 2018] - FAUXMIND: Master thesis project assessing the impact of mindfulness on false memories in a DRM paradigm translated into a virtual reality study.

FIRST AUTHOR
Publications

Ayache, J., Auvray, M., & Ciaunica, A. (2026). Spatiotemporal disruptions of reality perception in depersonalization. Personality and Individual Differences, 252, 113569.

Ayache, J., Laroche, J., Hérissé, M., Jean, P., Hebborn, A. K., Stricker, D., & Bardy, B. G. (2025, October). Rendering Togetherness: Embodied Social Synchronization in Multi-User VR. In 2025 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR) (pp. 696-705). IEEE.

Ayache, J., Stevenson, N., Patel, E., Sumich, A., Dumas, G., & Heym, N. (2025). A “fine-cuts” approach disentangling psychopathic, autistic and alexithymic traits in their associations with affective, cognitive and motor empathy. Personality and Individual Differences, 246, 113279.

Ayache, J., Dumas, G., Sumich, A., Kuss, D. J., Rhodes, D., & Heym, N. (2024). The «jingle-jangle fallacy» of empathy: Delineating affective, cognitive and motor components of empathy from behavioral synchrony using a virtual agent. Personality and Individual Differences, 219, 112478.

Ayache, J., Bieńkiewicz, M., Richardson, K., & Bardy, B. (2023, October). eXtended Reality of socio-motor interactions: Current Trends and Ethical Considerations for Mixed Reality Environments Design. In Companion Publication of the 25th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (pp. 154-158).

Ayache, J., Connor, A. M., Marks, S., Sumich, A., & Heym, N. (2022, December). Humanness lies in unpredictability: Role of Theory of Mind on anthropomorphism in human-computer interactions. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction (pp. 306-308).

Ayache, J., Abichou, K., La Corte, V., Piolino, P., & Sperduti, M. (2022). Mindfulness and false memories: state and dispositional mindfulness does not increase false memories for naturalistic scenes presented in a virtual environment. Psychological Research, 86(2), 571-584.

Ayache, J., Connor, A., Marks, S., Kuss, D. J., Rhodes, D., Sumich, A., & Heym, N. (2021). Exploring the “dark matter” of social interaction: Systematic review of a decade of research in spontaneous interpersonal coordination. Frontiers in Psychology, 4447.

Ayache, J., Heym, N., Sumich, A., Rhodes, D., Connor, A. M., & Marks, S. (2021). Feeling Closer Despite the Distance: How to Cultivate Togetherness Within Digital Spaces. Handbook of Research on Remote Work and Worker Well-Being in the Post-COVID-19 Era, 243-263.

Full publications on Google Scholar and ORCID

talks anD POSTER PRESENTATIONS

Ayache, J., Bieńkiewicz, M., Pla, S., Jean, P., Sumich, A., Heym., N., & Bardy, B. G. (2025, October)."Mapping Time and Space in Social Interactions with the Mirror and Rock-Paper-Scissor Games,"in TRF4, Time Research Forum Conference, 17-19 October 2025, Tokyo, Japan.

Ayache, J., Laroche, J., Pistre, C., Caraminot, O., Pla, S., Bieńkiewicz, M., & Bardy, B. G. (2025, May). “Swinging with my heart”: Impact of an aversive stimulation on affective states, social bonding, cardiac activity and individual kinematics during group synchrony. In NeuroFrance 2025, 14-16th May 2025, Montpellier, France.

Ayache, J., Pistre, C., Jean, P., Hebborn, A. K., Stricker, D., & Bardy, B. (2024, November). Impact of group synchrony, postural stability and agency on cybersickness symptoms. InEuroXR 2024.

Ayache, J., Lagarde, J., Sumich, A., & Heym, N. (2024, May). Moving, feeling and thinking together: A “fine cuts” approach toward understanding empathy and imitation using self-reports, behavioral and neural measurements. In European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neurosciences 2024 Conference, 22 - 25 May 2024, Ghent, Belgium.

Ayache, J., Becattini, V., Severs L., Nakul E., Auvray M., Ciaunica A. (2023, September). The influence of depersonalization on agency and perception of time. In TRF3, Time Research Forum Conference, 4-6 October 2023, Lisbon, Portugal.

Ayache, J., Dumas, G. Kuss, D. J., Rhodes, D., Sumich, A., & Heym, N. (2022, June). Togetherness in virtual spaces. Exploring the feeling of togetherness in virtual spaces: Empathy and synchrony in human-computer interactions. In MOCO, 8th International Conference on Movement and Computing Conference: 22-24 June 2022, Chicago, Illinois, USA.