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VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Memento EPFL//
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:The Science of Subjectivity : Neuroscience\, Medicine & Engineerin
 g
DTSTART:20111205T160000
DTSTAMP:20260925T002816Z
UID:2b5c9bc008b3db3b7fc6ca18b411de393b4ef5a44127a1f826458062
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Dr Olaf Blanke\nHow can a human brain develop self-consciousne
 ss? What are the brain mechanisms involved in this process? Recent theorie
 s argue that especially the investigation of bodily perception and body ex
 perience is of key importance in the development of data-driven neurobiolo
 gical models of self-consciousness. Extending initial neurological and neu
 roimaging findings we have manipulated several key aspects of self-conscio
 usness by merging techniques from the field of engineering (virtual realit
 y and robotics) with those from the cognitive neurosciences (multisensory 
 perception and neuroimaging) and modeling. Our research determined the bra
 in mechanisms of three crucial aspects of human self-consciousness: self-i
 dentification\, self-location (i.e. the feeling that “I” am an entity 
 that is localized at a position in space)\, and first-person perspective (
 i.e. “I” perceive the world from here). I will present work on patholo
 gical states of self-location and the first-person perspective due to dist
 urbed multisensory integration after focal brain damage. I then detail the
  experimental manipulation of self-location and first-person perspective i
 n healthy subjects using different visuo-tactile and visuo-vestibular conf
 licts and describe neuroimaging data using neuroscience robotics. These da
 ta suggest that activity of a special set of neurons in temporo-parietal c
 ortex\, insula\, and extrastriate cortex reflect human self-consciousness.
  I will finally describe more recent efforts to automatize visuo-tactile a
 nd visuo-vestibular stimulations using robotics technology and simulate hu
 man self-consciousness by applying principles from computational neuroscie
 nce\; the relevance for medicine (diagnosis and treatment of neurological 
 and psychiatric disease\, neuroprosthetics) will also be indicated.
LOCATION:SV 1717 A
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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