The 2nd meeting of EMP Seminar Series in Academic Year 2014
The agenda of the 2nd meeting of the EMP Seminar Series is outlined below.
Date and time: 7:30-8:30 pm, Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Venue: Room 3B310, Area 3, Tsukuba Campus, University of Tsukuba
Organizer: Jun Izawa (Associate Professor, Faculty of Engineering, Information and Systems)
Presenter: Dr. Tomohisa Asai, NTT Communication Science Laboratories
https://sites.google.com/a/psybox.org/asai/
Title: Emergence of the self-other distinction while generating body movements
Lecture content:
The origin of the concept of self is a perpetual mystery that has been debated since ancient times. Sensing the presence of oneself and others and communicating with others requires at the very least the representation within the brain of the concepts of self and others. Research in recent years has discussed the possibility that this self-other distinction is realized based on body movements.
For example, when thinking about the formation of the representation of the self (self-feeling, self-consciousness) the possibility is being discussed that we can first recognize ourselves only through the sensual feedback of our own body movements (reflexive self-consciousness). However, the sources of stimuli input externally (e.g., whether their origin is in the self or the environment) basically are unknown, and often noise is included.
Accordingly, we believe that a mechanism is in place for extracting ingredients originating within the self from input stimuli (internal model, forward model). It is likely that the ultimate representation of an interactive world is formed through use of each of the sensory inputs we label the self, others, and the environment based on this mechanism. This seminar will discuss the following topics based on the results of behavioral experiments: (i) the mechanism for extracting ingredients originating within the self and returning them to the self, and (ii) the relation to integration dysfunction syndrome, in which this mechanism might be damaged.