Lezing
LIBC Colloquium: Dynamic and Plastic Properties of Peri-Personal Space in Health and Disease
- Datum
- woensdag 27 januari 2021
- Tijd
- Bezoekadres
- via Zoom
Dynamic and Plastic Properties of Peri-Personal Space in Health and Disease
Our actions unfold within the theater of our peri-personal space (PPS) – the space immediately adjacent to and surrounding our bodies. This space is encoded by a frontoparietal network of multisensory neurons that respond both to touch on the body, and visual or auditory events when near, but not far from the body. Over the last decade, we have developed a behavioral measure of PPS in humans and demonstrated via electrocorticography that the encoding of this space is indeed based on frank multisensory integration. Moreover, we have proposed that this space delineates our subjective self-location, and not necessarily the true location of the body in space. In turn, by examining the basic properties of PPS we can further our understanding of the sense of selfhood. More recently, therefore, we have built a neural network model of PPS and demonstrated that neural adaptation and Hebbian learning – ubiquitous properties of brain function – may account for dynamic and plastic resizing of PPS as a function of environmental statistics. Lastly, we have shown that PPS remapping is inflexible in Autism Spectrum Disorder and current simulations are geared at attempting to account for these clinical observations.
If you would like to attend this lecture via zoom please register via e-mail to
d.fabiola@fsw.leidenuniv.nl