Henrik Ehrsson's group
Brain, Body & Self Laboratory
Department of Neuroscience
Goal
Our current research project addresses the question of how it is that we come to feel that
we own our body. This question is a fundamental one since the feeling of body ownership is
a basic aspect of self-consciousness. Our main goal is to identify the multisensory
mechanisms whereby the central nervous system distinguishes between sensory signals from
one's body and from the environment. The long term goal is to develop a physiology-based
model of the central representation of one's body.
Research
One line of research focuses on the question of how it is that we come to feel ownership over our
bodies. This problem can be formulated in terms of a multisensory binding problem: how is
visual, tactile, and proprioceptive information combined to obtain the single coherent object that is
one's limb. Another line addresses the question of how the brain represents the
spatial relationships and the relative size of different limbs and body parts. We also want to
improve our understanding of why people experience phantom limbs after amputation, and how experience and
training can change the central body representation.
Perceptual illusions are used in combination with state-of-the-art
neuroimaging techniques in humans to address these questions in humans. These illusions allow the controlled manipulation
of specific aspects of body representation in healthy individuals. Neuroimaging and focal
neurodisruption methods then allow us to probe the underlying brain mechanisms.
This research has important clinical and industrial applications. The projection of ownership
onto external objects represents a new direction in man-machine interfacing, neuroprosthetics, and
computer science.
The Lab
Our laboratory is located at the Department of Neuroscience. We have a large virtual reality lab, a behavioral testing room with physiology recording devices (SCR, EMG etc), and a state-of-the-art TMS lab (with a MRI-guided navigation system, installed May 2010). For functional magnetic resonance imaging we have full access to one a 3T Tim Trio scanner at the Karolinska Hospital Huddinge MR-Centre (Head of MR-physics: Prof. Tie-Qiang Li), and one 3T GE Scanner at the Karolinska Hospital Solna MR-Centre (Head Prof Martin Ingvar).
Funding and partnerships
The lab is funded by Ehrsson's five-year (2008-2013) Starting Investigator Grant from the European Reseach Council (Neuroscience panel) and a five-year "Future Research Leader" grant from The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (2008-2013). Ehrsson is also funded by a Career Development Award from The Human Frontier Science Programme (2009-2011), the Swedish Research Council and VINNOVA. Our lab is a partner of Stockholm Brain Institute (www.stockholmbrain.se) a consortium for Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience in Stockholm, and PRESENCCIA (www.presenccia.org) an Integrated Project funded under the European Sixth Framework Program Future and Emerging Technologies (FET).
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