Publications de Christian Pfeiffer

Microgravity induces overconfidence in perceptual decision-making

Leyla Loued-Khenissi, Davide Scaramuzza, Christian Pfeiffer

Does gravity affect decision-making? This question comes into sharp focus as plans for interplanetary human space missions solidify. In the framework of Bayesian brain theories, gravity encapsulates a strong prior, anchoring agents to a reference frame via ...

Nature Portfolio2023

Vestibular modulation of peripersonal space boundaries

Olaf Blanke, Christian Pfeiffer, Andrea Serino, Jean-Paul Noel

Human-environment interactions are mediated through the body and occur within the peripersonal space (PPS), the space immediately adjacent to and surrounding the body. The PPS is taken to be a critical interface between the body and the environment, and in ...

2018

Interoceptive signals impact visual processing: Cardiac modulation of visual body perception

Olaf Blanke, Fosco Bernasconi, Roberta Ronchi, Christian Pfeiffer, Mariia Kaliuzhna, Javier Bello Ruiz

Multisensory perception research has largely focused on exteroceptive signals, but recent evidence has revealed the integration of exteroceptive signals with interoceptive information. Such research revealed that heartbeat signals affect sensory (e.g., vis ...

Elsevier2017

Distinct vestibular effects on early and late somatosensory cortical processing in humans

Olaf Blanke, Fosco Bernasconi, Christian Pfeiffer, Michiel van Elk

In non-human primates several brain areas contain neurons that respond to both vestibular and somatosensory stimulation. In humans, vestibular stimulation activates several somatosensory brain regions and improves tactile perception. However, less is known ...

Academic Press Inc Elsevier Science2016

Transient Modulations of Neural Responses to Heartbeats Covary with Bodily Self-Consciousness

Olaf Blanke, Fosco Bernasconi, Roy Salomon, Christian Pfeiffer, Hyeongdong Park, Javier Bello Ruiz

Recent research has investigated self-consciousness associated with the multisensory processing of bodily signals (e.g., somatosensory, visual, vestibular signals), a notion referred to as bodily self-consciousness, and these studies have shown that the ma ...

Soc Neuroscience2016

Visual gravity contributes to subjective first-person perspective

Olaf Blanke, Bruno Herbelin, Andrea Serino, Christian Pfeiffer, Petr Grivaz

A fundamental component of conscious experience involves a first-person perspective (1PP), characterized by the experience of being a subject and of being directed at the world. Extending earlier work on multisensory perceptual mechanisms of 1PP, we here a ...

Oxford Univ Press2016

Peripersonal space as the space of the bodily self

Olaf Blanke, Andrea Serino, Christian Pfeiffer, Jean-Paul Noel

Bodily self-consciousness (BSC) refers to experience of one's self as located within an owned body (self-identification) and as occupying a specific location in space (self-location). BSC can be altered through multisensory stimulation, as in the Full Body ...

Elsevier2015

Vestibular contribution to bodily self-consciousness and multisensory cortical processing

Christian Pfeiffer

How does the self relate to the body? Bodily self-consciousness, i.e. the sense of being a subject bound to a body, involves a first-person perspective (1PP), i.e. the sense of being directed at the world. Prior research suggests that bodily self-conscious ...

EPFL2015

Multisensory Spatial Mechanisms of the Bodily Self and Social Cognition - A Commentary on Vittorio Gallese and Valentina Cuccio

Christian Pfeiffer

This commentary aims to find the right description of the pre-reflective brain mechanisms underlying our phenomenal experience of being a subject bound to a physical body (bodily self) and basic cognitive, perceptual, and subjective aspects related to inte ...

2015

Visuospatial viewpoint manipulation during full-body illusion modulates subjective first-person perspective

Olaf Blanke, Christian Pfeiffer, Valentin Marc Schmutz

Self-consciousness is based on multisensory signals from the body. In full-body illusion (FBI) experiments, multisensory conflict was used to induce changes in three key aspects of bodily self-consciousness (BSC): self-identification (which body 'I' identi ...

Springer Verlag2014