Is there a way to depict how people ‘see’ themselves with their minds’ eyes? The question of how we represent ourselves has been at the centre of social, cultural and artistic practices across centuries, as well as being central to our understanding of mental health issues such as body-image disorders. Professor Tsakiris uses three examples from modern neuroscience to illustrate the ways in which we can understand how our sense of self, crucially dependent on the experience of our body, is generated, maintained or altered in the human mind. The evidence of his research shows the close interaction between different aspects of self-representation, and raises intriguing possibilities for understanding identity, body-image disorders, as well as informing our cultural practices of representing and portraying the self.
Professor Manos Tsakiris is Professor of Psychology at Royal Holloway College, University of London. He is engaged in interdisciplinary research to investigate the basic neurocognitive principles governing the sense of agency and body-ownership, and the interaction between them.
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keywords:
#mentalhealth, #bodyimage, #disorders, #neuroscience, #mind, #selfrepresentation, #identity, #bodyimagedisorders