Body Perception Laboratory
To interact with the world around us, our brains have to track our bodies in space (body representations) and monitor the way we control our actions (sense of agency). In healthy people, this usually occurs unremarkably and is based on the integration of signals from multiple senses. However, these normal aspects of self-monitoring can be disturbed in cognitive disorders such as anorexia nervosa (whereby individuals may have problems accurately tracking the spatial dimensions of their bodies) and schizophrenia (whereby individuals may for example have problems tracking the causes of their actions).
In the body perception lab we have facilities and equipment to study the multisensory mechanisms of self-perception. This includes equipment to manipulate visual bodily signals (such as rubber hands and virtual reality equipment) as well as multisensory signals (such as tactors and LEDs). Furthermore, we have equipment to record bodily actions (such as a body motion trackers and touch screens).
Equipment
- Virtual reality head-set (Oculus Rift and Vive)
- Motion tracking setup (Polhemus Fastrak)
- One large touch screen (NEC)
- Various tactors and LEDs for multisensory stimulation (Dancer Design)
- Rubber Hand Illusion paradigm setups including several artificial hands (Otto Bock)
- Stereoscope (Stereoaids)