Body-B Lab

Daniele Romano was interviewed about the role of a psychologist nowadays. Which job is proper for a psychologist in 2018?

Daniele has been interviewed for the TV show "Meravigliosamente", speaking about research of body representation and how it can contributes to the next step of our knowledge.

Per interagire con il mondo esterno il cervello non mappa solo la nostra posizione nello spazio, ma crea anche una rappresentazione dello spazio sul corpo: il pollice, per esempio, è associato al basso e l'indice all'alto, ed entrambe le dita sono maggiormente sensibili agli stimoli provenienti dalla rispettiva direzione preferenziale

Nociceptive stimuli are processed through specific sensory pathways. Nonetheless, pain perception is highly subjective, and the amount of pain we feel depends on many things, including whether or not we are able to see the relevant body part. Indeed, looking at one’s own body reduces responses to pain, an effect known by the name “visual analgesia”.

Edificio U6 - Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo 1,

Milano Lunedì 21 marzo 2016, ore 17.00

Inaugurazione della mostra "Percezione-Azione": 30 opere d’arte realizzate dagli studenti dell’Accademia di Brera  e una grande opera installativa donata dall’artista genovese Renata Boero.

Come percepiamo il mondo attorno a noi? Una serie di esperimenti psicologici e di illusioni visive del “Laboratorio delle illusioni” ci fanno cambiare idea sulla fedeltà delle nostre percezioni: in una camera oscurata, davanti allo specchio, il nostro viso può cambiare o trasfigurarsi a seconda della luce di particolari candele, fino a diventare quello di un altro. Un viaggio inatteso alla scoperta delle nostre illusioni che non ci deluderà.

The awareness of being the owner of one’s body is probably the most common basic experience in life and is rarely considered as a cognitive function – just like speech or memory. This sense of ownership can be disrupted by brain injury, leading to a striking neuropsychological condition called somatoparaphrenia, defined as the acquired delusion …

The perceived size of your hand affects how intensely your hand feels pain, according to a new study.A paper published in Neuropsychologia details the results of an experiment in which each participant was subjected to a pinprick-like sensation on one fingertip. The researchers used a lens to modify the size of the hand receiving the painful stimulus to look larger or smaller than normal in some of the experiments. They compared these responses to the pain response in the participants' unmodified hand.

It may happen that, following a stroke, people experience delusion that one’s own limbs belong to someone else. Although this condition called “somatoparaphrenia” may seem absurd, it is not of psychiatric origin but rather of neurological, more precisely, neuropsychological origin. Near 15% of people who have suffered from alesion to the right hemisphere experience this condition.

Pain experience can be modulated at different levels of processing and is influenced by higher cognitive function like attention and expectations. It has been shown recently that looking at one’s own hand, but not at a neutral object or another person’s hand, induces analgesic effects while receiving acute painful stimulation...

No matter how much of a critical thinker you consider yourself, your brain is pretty gullible. With a few minutes and a couple of props, your brain can be convinced that one of your limbs is made of rubber or invisible, or that your whole body is the size of a Barbie doll’s. All these illusions depend on your senses of vision and touch interacting. But a new illusion trades sight for sound. By hearing the sound of a hammer striking marble each time it tapped their hands, subjects came to feel that their limbs were made of stone.

È attraverso la consapevolezza del nostro corpo che entriamo in relazione col mondo esterno. Ma che succede quando perdiamo questa capacità per un danno al cervello? Uno studio dell’Università di Milano-Bicocca, pubblicato sulla rivista Brain, rivela per la prima volta le evidenze fisiologiche di questo effetto. Che conduce fino a non riconoscere più i propri arti

Our bodies are made of flesh and bones. We all know this, and throughout our daily lives, all our senses constantly provide converging information about this simple, factual truth. But is this always the case? A new study reports a surprising bodily illusion demonstrating how we can rapidly update our assumptions about the material qualities of our bodies based on recent multisensory perceptual experience.

Our body is made of flesh and bones. We know it, and in our daily lives all the senses constantly provide converging information about this simple, factual truth. But is this always the case? A new study by Irene Senna and colleagues, about to be published inPLOS ONE, reports a surprising bodily illusion demonstrating that we can rapidly update our assumptions about the material qualities of our body, based on recent multisensory perceptual experience.

La sensazione che il nostro corpo ci appartenga è un dato che diamo per scontato. Ma un danno cerebrale può incrinare questa certezza, portando a non riconoscere più un arto come proprio e rendendoci indifferenti alle minacce di stimoli dolorosi su di esso.