Topic: first-person perspective

Could an artificial agent develop an operational first-person perspective through its own interaction history? This talk considers embodied systems that predict, receive feedback and integrate multiple modalities through global-workspace-like dynamics. Using the Conscious Turing Machine framework, it proposes that an agent-centred world model can acquire a temporally organized point of view. The discussion connects that structural proposal with enaction and neurophenomenology without establishing subjective experience in machines.

How the brain represents the body is a fundamental question in cognitive neuroscience. Experimental studies are difficult because ‘the body is always there’ (William James). In recent years immersive virtual reality techniques have been introduced that deliver apparent changes to the body extending earlier techniques such as the rubber hand illusion, or substituting the whole body by a virtual one visually collocated with the real body, and seen from a normal first person perspective. This talk will introduce these techniques, and concentrate on how changing the body can change the mind and be

Aims. The aim of our study was to investigate the relationship between social anxiety (SA) and empathy. Based on EEG ERP technique, we examined how socially anxious individuals process empathy for pain in relation to perspective taken. Methods. The ERP procedure involved images depicting hands in painful and neutral situations, after which participants evaluated the degree of perceived painfulness and unpleasantness of the stimuli. The study was divided into blocks, each preceding with the instruction to take first-person perspective (FPP) or third-person perspectives (TPP). Participants (N=65