Salvatore Maria Aglioti
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Salvatore Maria Aglioti, professor of Psychological Physiology currently directs the CoSAN lab (agliotilab.org) at the Sapienza University of Rome, the Neuroscience and Society, Research Line (https://nes.iit.it/), and the the Social Neuropsychology lab at the Fondazione Santa Lucia, IRCCS, Roma. Their research interests focus on the psychological and neural processes underlying: i) lie and deception in social contexts; ii) normal and abnormal functioning of social interactions, empathy and personality; iii) interoceptive pathways to corporeal awareness in healthy and brain damaged patients; iv); voluntary action and bodily sensations in healthy humans, brain damaged and spinal cord injured patients; v) embodied aesthetics and the brain. Their most recent projects have focused on the role of the deep-body in higher-order mental functions like moral-decision making.
In April 2024, he joins the IAS for a one-month writing residency.
Research Interests
Topics: Moral decision making; Empathy for pain and pleasure; interoception and deep-body; the mystic body; embodied aesthetics
Techniques: immersive virtual reality; thermal imaging; non-invasive brain stimulation; EEG and laser evoked potentials; autonomic nervous system activity; recording
The body in the metaverse
The topic of the neural representation of one’s own and other bodies has fascinated scholars not just in the field of neuroscience and psychology but also in that of anthropology, philosophy, medicine and engineering. Initially linked to the analysis of patients with neurological and psychiatric disorders, the topic has been revived at the end of the past millennium by neuroscientific and psychological studies about the neural underpinnings of bodily representations and link between bodily illusions and self-consciousness. The debate concerning the different instances of bodily representations is now more lively than ever and a growing number of studies (including my own ones) are highlighting the link between the material body in the real world and the seemingly immaterial nature of virtual world, particularly in relation to the looming metaverse momentum. The present project deals with some of the outstanding questions current research on the relationship between body and brain is facing. It is for example central to understand whether wearing artificial physical (robot) or virtual (avatar) bodies brings about changes in the way the real body is perceived. Or whether the some of the features attributed to the embodied agent (e.g. omnipotence, intelligence, beauty, power, morality) will transfer to the body of the individual involved in the embodiment process. Since human lives are becoming increasingly virtual, studies on the destiny of our bodies in the decades to come, have the potential to be at the core of the multidisciplinary discussion on the link between future humans and technology, an issue that is central to science and humanities.
Key Publications
Dupont L, Santangelo V, Azevedo R, Panasiti MS, Aglioti SM (2023) Reputation risk modulates anterior insular and cingulate cortex during dishonest decision making. Communications Biology , 6 (1), 475
Pezzetta R, Ozkan DG, Era V,…. Aglioti SM (2023) Combined EEG and immersive virtual reality unveil dopaminergic modulation of error monitoring in Parkinson’s Disease. npj Parkinson Disease , 9 (1), 3
Monti A, Porciello G, Panasiti MS, Aglioti SM (2022) Gut markers of bodily self-consciousness. iScience. 9 (8), 220061
Scattolin M, Panasiti MS, Ho JY, Lenggenhager B, Aglioti SM (2023) Xenomelia Deceptive behaviors increase the estrangement of unwanted limbs: a study on Body Integrity Dysphoria. iScience, 26 (9)
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