[Seminar] Three Talk Series.

Speaker: Prof. Michiteru Kitazaki
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology. 

Title : 
Cognitive Aspects of Virtual Co-embodiment

Abstract :
Advancements in virtual reality have enabled multiple users to share a single virtual body, a phenomenon referred to as “virtual co-embodiment.” This emerging technology offers unique opportunities for studying cognitive and perceptual processes related to body ownership, agency, and self-other distinctions. In this talk, I will explore what cognitive factors affect co-embodiment and how co-embodiment alters our behavior and perception of self. Drawing from experimental findings, I will discuss the implications of co-embodiment for neuroscience, psychology, and human-computer interaction.

Bio :
Michiteru Kitazaki is a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology, and principal investigator of the Visual Psychophysics Laboratory since 2000. His research combines perceptual psychology and virtual reality to investigate human perception and action, to elucidate cognitive mechanisms for empathy with non-human agents, and to design future bodies with appropriate ownership, high effectiveness, and novel experiences in virtual and real environments using virtual embodiments.

URL : http://real.cs.tut.ac.jp/index.html

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Speaker: Dr. Ganesh Gowrishankar 
Directeur de Recherche (Senior Researcher) with the Centre National de la Recherché Scientifique (CNRS)

Title : Does your brain accept a sixth finger?

Abstract :
How should machines- robots, computers agents and automated vehicles behave near humans, such that an interacting human is comfortable with them, trusts them, feels safe with them, and is willing to coexist with them? And how do these devices change the human behavior and brain? In our group we use integrated research in Engineering and Neuroscience to answer these questions and develop a better understanding of, what we call the science of human-machine interactions. In this talk I will briefly introduce the current/recent research in my group, and as an example of how we integrate neuroscience with robotics research, give more details of an ongoing work where we are examining the case of supernumerary robotic limbs, their control and how their ‘embodiment’ influences the behavior and brain of the user.    

Bio :
Ganesh Gowrishankar is a Directeur de Recherche (Senior Researcher) with the Centre National de la Recherché Scientifique (CNRS), France and is currently located at the the Laboratoire d'Informatique, de Robotique et de Microélectronique de Montpellier (LIRMM) in Montpellier. He is a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Tsukuba, and University of Electro-communication in Tokyo. His research focuses on human-machine interactions by integrating core research in human sensori-motor control and cognitive neuroscience with robot control, learning and AI. Ganesh
received his Bachelor of Engineering (first-class, Hons.) degree from the Delhi College of Engineering, India, in 2002 and his Master of Engineering from the National University of Singapore, in 2005, both in Mechanical Engineering. He received his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Imperial College London, U.K., in 2010. 

URL : https://www.lirmm.fr/~gowrishank

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Speaker: Prof. Yoichi Miyawaki  
Professor at the Graduate School of Informatics Engineering, The director of Center of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering of the University of Electro-Communications  (UEC Tokyo).

Title : Visual Perception Arising from the Subspace Neural Activity

Abstract :
Neural activity patterns are believed to encode human brain functions. Considering the enormous degree of freedom of the spatio-temporal dynamics of the neural activity patterns, we hypothesize the existence of a neural activity subspace spanned by residual dimensions unused to encode common, everyday human brain functions. This hypothesis is one of the bases of our system development and behavioral/neuroimaging demonstration of the neural embodiment of an artificial body part (“6th finger project”). Here we are also trying to let humans use the unused subspace of neural activity in the visual perception domain. To achieve this goal, we used a deep neural network as a proxy of the human visual cortex and synthesized visual images designed to evoke subspace neural activity patterns. Visual psychophysics experiments showed that the synthetic “subspace” visual images elicited unconventional perception. In this talk, I will present these novel ideas and results, and discuss the possibility of whether our visual perception space could be extended to the unseen world.

Bio
Yoichi Miyawaki is a professor at the Graduate School of Informatics Engineering and the director of Center of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering of the University of Electro-Communications (UEC Tokyo). He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Tokyo, 2001, and joined RIKEN Brain Science Institutes, ATR Computational Neuroscience Lab., before starting his own lab in UEC Tokyo 2012. During 2018-2019, he joined NIH (USA) to proceed with his research about ultra-high-field functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). His major research areas are human neuroimaging, visual psychophysics, and multidimensional data analysis using such as machine learning techniques. Recently he is particularly interested in improving spatiotemporal resolution of human neuroimaging using ultra-high-field fMRI and its application to reveal neural mechanisms of human sensory perception and its augmentation.

Photo courtesy of JST ERATO Inami JIZAI Body project

URL : http://www.cns.mi.uec.ac.jp