Lectures and seminars Cognitive Neuroscience Club with Ana Tajadura-Jiménez: "The Hearing Body: Sound-driven Body Transformation Experiences and Applications for Emotional and Physical Health"

"The Hearing Body: Sound-driven Body Transformation Experiences and Applications for Emotional and Physical Health"

Speaker

Dr Ana Tajadura-Jiménez, Associate Professor, Computer Science Department, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain 

Body perceptions are important for people’s motor, social and emotional functioning. Critically, current neuroscientific research has shown that body perceptions are not fixed, but are continuously updated through sensorimotor information.

In this talk I will present work from our group on how sound feedback on one’s actions can be used to alter body perception, creating Body Transformation Experiences. I will talk about how neuroscientifically grounded insights that body perceptions are continuously updated through sensorimotor information may contribute to the design of novel body-centred technologies to support people’s needs and for behaviour change.

I will then present various studies from our current project, Magic OutFit, aimed to inform the design of wearable technology in which sound-driven changes in body perception are used to enhance behavioral patterns and emotional state in the context of exertion. I will discuss how apart from the focus on real-life applications, novel technologies for body sensing and sensory feedback may also become a research tool for investigating how emotional and multisensory processes shape body perception.

I will conclude by identifying new challenges and opportunities that this line of work presents, some of which will be addressed in our upcoming ERC project BODYinTRANSIT.