Movement is life, and life is rhythmically punctuated by the hidden beats of our heart. We do not typically pay attention to our moving hearts and bodies. Yet our survival and wellbeing crucially depend on our ability to optimally integrate sensory signals coming from both inside and outside our moving bodies in order to interact with a wider physical and social environment.
The project “Walking with my Heart: Examining the Effect of Dynamic Real-Time Sensory Feedback of Bodily Movements and Heartbeats on the Sense of Self and Sense of Presence in Depersonalisation“ aims to explore the relationship between bodily movements and self-awareness in depersonalization (DP henceforth), a condition that makes people that feel detached from one’s self, body and the world (Sierra & Berrios 1997).
Our project’s outcomes will contribute to further our current knowledge on this distressing and widely spread phenomenon, and to raise awareness around a condition that has been described as a ‘hidden pandemic’ (Sierra 2009). Joint efforts from philosophy, psychology and engineering will pave the way to potential new therapeutic embodied and dynamic approaches to DP. For example, by making people more aware of their dynamic bodily movements to alleviate the feeling of being statically ‘trapped’ and living in one’s head.
This project will be implemented and managed by Dr Anna Ciaunica, the PI, in her interdisciplinary lab the Co-Embodied Self Lab (CEL), at the Centre for Philosophy of Science (CFCUL), University of Lisbon, Portugal. Anna will be assisted by : 1) Prof Ana Tajadura-Jimenez who has developped the innovative device “the Magic Shoes” (https://magicshoes.es/the-team) that uses sensory feedback to modulate bodily self-awareness; and 2) Prof Lara Maister, working on self-awareness, social cognition, and the perceptual and conceptual distinctions between self and other.
Simon Knogler is the appointed Research Assistant to work with the team in this groundbreaking project.