Embodied space in architecture, cognitive neuroscience, and virtual reality

Isabella Maria Pasqualini
EPFL, 2012
EPFL thesis

Abstract

Recent findings in cognitive neuroscience enable improved understanding of embodiment and egocentric space in architecture. From a historical perspective the human body has been inferred as a reference in the debate of architectonic proportion. It was suggested that architectonic form moulds the subjective experience of the environment in contingency with skilful articulation of geometrical proportions in a three-dimensional construct. Modern science recalls several notions of how perception, thought and action are embodied. Embodiment and the sense of body ownership as such have been linked to multisensory and own-body processing, allowing for a relationship between aspects of the self to the conception of architectonic space and theory. Investigations about multisensory integration of architectonic space and its relation to own-body processing may therefore provide scientific insight to metaphorical and functional associations with the human bodily experience of architectonic space and its digital representation including perspective and immersive virtual reality. Attempts to sketch an interaction between architecture and cognitive neuroscience may bring about a design discipline based on multisensory own-body processing with permeable borders to contemporary science and technologies. This PhD thesis introduces digital space and cognitive neuroscience to the investigation of embodiment in architecture using techniques from immersive virtual reality and cognitive psychology. Here, three experimental studies using immersive virtual reality were based on the phenomenology of own-body perception introducing parameters from architecture. With such setups we tested whether bodily self-consciousness may be associated to architecture through a visuo-tactile conflict, and, whether changes in the architectonic space modulate bodily self-consciousness. Our results relate bodily self-consciousness with architecture specific perceptions, as well as bodily stability. Also, we observed perceptual changes related to visual perspective. We discuss such findings with regard to bodily feelings and perceived geometry through a critical confrontation with notions of embodiment in architecture.

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Isabella Maria Pasqualini
EPFL, 2012
EPFL thesis

Abstract

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/182665?ln=en

About this result

Related concepts (22)

Related concepts

Related publications (87)

Related publications

What is the relevance of the body and body-transformed sensory information for subjective experience? In the last two decades, paradigms from cognitive neuroscience have demonstrated that the subjective sensations of possessing a body (body ownership, BO), of being located in space (self-location) and being directed at the world (first-person perspective, 1PP), crucially rely on and can be manipulated by exposure to conflicting sensory information in so called bodily illusions. These aspects of subjective experience that are attached to the body, or bodily self-consciousness (BSC), are therefore malleable in healthy participants and accessible to experimental manipulations. BSC is argued to rely on multisensory integration mechanisms within the space directly surrounding the body (i.e. the peripersonal space, PPS). Amply supported by behavioral evidence, data from the brain is sparse. To help elucidate, in terms of neural activity, the relationship between PPS and an aspect of BSC, namely BO, in the first part of my thesis, I will present the results from an fMRI study and a meta-analysis, whereby I globally show that visual and tactile information presented within PPS is processed predominantly within the fronto-parietal and temporo-parietal regions of the brain whereas BO is processed in fronto-parietal and insular regions. Critically, both PPS and BO processing converges only in the left superior parietal cortex (intraparietal sulcus and area 2), thus suggesting both a level of neural integration and dissociation. The subjective 1PP is also argued to rely on multisensory mechanisms and in particular vestibular signals, but the underlying behavioral and neural mechanisms remain largely unexplored. Thus, in the second part of my thesis, I present a behavioral study and a clinical case report. In the prior, we exposed healthy subjects in a supine posture to touch on their backs and synchronous or asynchronous touch on the back of an observed avatar. We further simulated visual gravity using virtual balls falling either in the same or opposite direction with respect to the pull of physical gravity. In line with our expectations, the latter biased the direction of the 1PP to that suggested by the visual gravity (thus subjects reported looking downwards). The visual gravity information also interacted with the synchrony of stroking to affect 1PP and a more frequent downward 1PP was associated with a higher self-elevation rating. Also in line with the idea that BSC and in particular the 1PP relies on multisensory (in particular visuo-vestibular) integration, in the clinical case report we describe a male patient with peripheral vestibulopathy experiencing out-of-body experiences, who fails to integrate visual and vestibular information and is sensitive to visuo-tactile conflicts in bodily illusions. The results from my thesis collectively reinforce the current view that BSC can be manipulated by and thus crucially relies on multisensory mechanisms within PPS as shown both behaviorally for 1PP and in terms of neural correlates for BO. The results also suggest that different combinations of sensory stimuli manipulate most effectively these aspects, with synchronous visuo-tactile stroking affecting BO whereas asynchronous visuo-tactile stroking and vestibular information affecting 1PP. Apprehending better these mechanisms will be an important milestone to understanding how sensory information shapes subjective experience.

EPFL2017

Illusory own body perceptions: case reports and relevance for bodily self-consciousness

Olaf Blanke, Sebastian Dieguez Falcon, Lukas Heydrich

Neurological disorders of body representation have for a long time suggested the importance of multisensory processing of bodily signals for self-consciousness. One such group of disorders--illusory own body perceptions affecting the entire body--has been proposed to be especially relevant in this respect, based on neurological data as well as philosophical considerations. This has recently been tested experimentally in healthy subjects showing that integration of multisensory bodily signals from the entire body with respect to the three aspects: self-location, first-person perspective, and self-identification [corrected], is crucial for bodily self-consciousness. Here we present clinical and neuroanatomical data of two neurological patients with paroxysmal disorders of full body representation in whom only one of these aspects, self-identification, was abnormal. We distinguish such disorders of global body representation from related but distinct disorders and discuss their relevance for the neurobiology of bodily self-consciousness.

Elsevier2010

Multisensory and sensorimotor origins of the sense of self

Polona Pozeg

Cognitive neuroscience has increasingly focused on studying the subject, i.e. the self, of conscious experience. In order to be the subject of an experience, we generally experience owning a physical body, being located within that body, and being able to distinguish the body and its actions from others. These pre-reflective experiences are based on brain mechanisms of multisensory and sensorimotor integration. In this thesis I investigated how our sense of self, in particular the senses of body ownership and of agency, depend on multimodal bodily signals. I achieved this by using approaches developed by cognitive neuroscience to study how the sense of self relates to the processing of bodily signals: creating bodily illusions with multisensory conflicts through the use of virtual reality and robotics. The first part of this thesis describes the investigation of the sense of body ownership in healthy subjects and in spinal cord injury patients, achieved by inducing conflicts between tactile information and visual feedback. The research presented in the second part of the thesis is centered on the experience of self-touch. There, I have first investigated how the manipulation of reference frames influences the perception of the illusion of self-touch, and second, how active self-touch influences the sense of body ownership. Lastly, in the third part of the thesis, I investigated how experimentally induced multisensory and sensorimotor conflicts perturb the sense of self in healthy subjects and induce experiences similar to certain symptoms observed in neurological and psychiatric disorders. I show that particular conflicts between bodily signals not only affect body perception and sense of agency for motor actions but also propagate to higher levels and influence even the sense of agency for mental representations in healthy subjects. Finally, I discuss my results and their relation to existing knowledge on bodily self-consciousness and position them in a broader picture of our current understanding of the self.

EPFL2016

Multisensory and sensorimotor origins of the sense of self

Polona Pozeg

EPFL2016

EPFL2017