My research interests are based on a fascination with the underlying brain processes of the perception of our bodily self and the world around us. My main research focus over the past few years has been attentional selection of somatosensory information and how this selection process is influenced by what we see (visual events in our environment and vision of our body), by our current body posture and by social and internal action representations (seeing someone else act or preparing to act ourselves). I am specifically interested in understanding the brain mechanism underlying attentional selection within somatosensory processing and for this I use measurements of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as well as behavioural measurements of response times, accuracy and eye movements.

Examples of Current Research Questions:

Attention to touch: what is the ERP signature of tactile attentional selection? which stages of processing are modulated by attention to the body? how do we select information from single or multiple locations on the body and how is distractor information treated? what are the differences between voluntary and reflexive tactile attention and are these independent mechanism? how are these selection process modulated by what we see (vision) and how our body is positioned (proprioception)? does tactile attentional selection support the notion of a supramodal  or modality specific attention mechanism? what is the sequence of processes when attending to the body ( reflexively and voluntarily)? is attention a multi-level process and are these sequential or independent effects?

Movement and Attention: when we move our body, where is our attention? at the goal or moving body part? are these linked or independent processes? in what way are tactile perceptual processes affected during movement preparation and execution? how does this compare to  covert orienting of attention?

The Space around the Body: to what extend influence events close to the body processing of one's own bodily information? what role does attention and body posture play in this integration between information from the body and external but close to the body information?

Mirror Touch: when we observe someone else being touch how does this affect processing of touch on our own body? similarly, if we observe someone else touch an object - do we resonate that experience in our own somatosensory system? which level of somatosensory processing are modulated by touch observation? and are these processes linked to one's own empathy skills?

Self-awareness: common measures of self-awareness entail orienting to the body and selecting certain internal stimuli (e.g. heart beat) - what is the link between attention to the body and self-awareness measures? does attention to the body modulate processing of internally generated signals in a similar fashion than processing of touch? 

Mindfulness training: this is a popular and effective form of therapy that entails training attention through focusing on the body especially when one's mind wonders. Mindfulness training incorporates component that may each train different aspects of attention. Importantly, it is not clear which aspects of attention are trained (orienting or selection)? by which aspect of this training (body scan, mindful breath)? and whether specifically body attention is trained (more so than external attention)?