Mirror Touch
Seeing yourself beyond yourself, 2018
Sarah Cooney, Alan O'Dowd, Fiona Newell (IE)
An experiment examining whether a cue to self-identity can be used to influence bodily self-consciousness. Bodily self-consciousness refers to the sense that one resides inside a distinct body and views the world from the perspective of that body. Traditionally, bodily self-consciousness and spatial cognition have both been examined by manipulating one’s sense of vision and touch.
BIO
Alan and Sarah are members of Fiona’s Multisensory Cognition Lab in Trinity College Dublin’s Institute of Neuroscience. The research conducted in the lab aims to explain how multiple sensory cues, such as touch, sight and sound, combine to form a coherent perception of the world around us.
Alan's PhD research is concerned with investigating the cortical and behavioural processes involved in bodily self-consciousness, examining how we maintain a constant perception of self and distinguish ourselves from others. Multiple sensory cues must give rise to this distinction, but depending on context, the relative importance of these cues may change. A rare condition known as mirror-touch synaesthesia, where people experience tactile sensations induced by seeing someone else touched, provides a platform to examine these questions further.