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Catherine Preston, PhD
(Postdoctoral Fellow)
Research
Under normal circumstances healthy individuals have little problem feeling an accurate sense of ownership over their own body parts and a sense of agency over their own self-produced actions (feeling in control of their own movements).
However, these processes, which are fundamental to a sense of self, can become disrupted in some clinical disorders.
The main aim of Catherine's research is to uncover the processes underlying both body ownership and movement agency and how this may then relate to relevant patient groups.
Catherine's most recent research utilizes multisensory bodily illusions to manipulate body size and shape to determine whether we can not only alter how we perceive our bodies but also how we feel about our bodies with a view to relate findings to disordered eating behavior, such as anorexia and bulimia nervosa.
Her work also aims to relate such changes to neural networks associated with body representation using fMRI and investigate whether the effects can be modulated by visual perspective
(first person perspective - how we normally see ourselves Vs. third person perspective - how other people normally view our body and how we view other peoples bodies).
Other aspects of Catherine's work look at mechanisms that modulate feelings of ownership over individual body parts (hand and arm) and the role of body part misrepresentation in clinical disorders, such as anosognosia for hemiplegia and chronic pain in osteoarthritis.
Sample Publications
Preston, C. & Newport, R (2011). Analgesic effects of multisensory illusions in osteoarthritis. Rheumatology. PDF
Preston, C. & Newport, R (2011). Differential effects of perceived hand location on the disruption of embodiment by apparent physical encroachment of the limb. Cognitive Neuroscience. PDF
Preston, C. & Newport, R (2011). Evidence for dissociable representations for body image and body schema from a patient with visual neglect. Neurocase. PDF
Preston, C. Jenkinson, P., & Newport, R. (2010) Anosognosia as a global deficit in motor awareness: evidence from the non-paralysed limb. Neuropsychologia. 48(12), 3443-3450. PDF
Preston, C. & Newport, R. (2010) Self-denial and the role of intentions in the sense of agency. Consciousness and Cognition. 19(4), 986-998. PDF
Newport, R & Preston, C.(2010). Pulling the finger off disrupts agency, embodiment and peripersonal space. Perception. 39(9), 1296-1298. PDF
Newport, R., Pearce, R. & Preston, C. (2010) Fake hands in action: embodiment and control of supernumerary limbs. Experimental Brain Research. 204(3), 385-395. PDF
Contact
Catherine Preston, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Neuroscience
Karolinska Institutet
Retzius väg 8, 171 77 Stockholm, Sweden
email: catherine.preston @ ki.se
office phone: (+46) 8 524 87 066
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