TSC 2010

PLENARY   3   Bodily Awareness   

Henrik Ehrsson, Two legs, two arms, one head. Who am I?

                                                                                                     Henrik Ehrsson

Henrik Ehrsson - Senior Lecturer, Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

Born in Sweden in 1972, Henrik Ehrsson is a cognitive neuroscientist interested in the problem of how we come to sense that we own our body. He thinks the key to solving this problem is to identify the multisensory mechanisms whereby the central nervous system distinguishes between sensory signals from one's body and from the environment. By clarifying how the normal brain produces a sense of ownership of one’s body, we can learn to project ownership onto artificial bodies and simulated virtual ones; and even make two people have the experience of swapping bodies with one another. This could have important applications in the fields of virtual reality and neuro-prosthetics.