Friday seminar – Alessandro Farnè

Friday 27 March at 11:30

Venue: Centre Broca

In the frame of the symposium: Mini Symposium: How touch creates space perception

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Alessandro Farnè
CRNL, Lyon
https://www.crnl.fr/fr/equipe/impact

Title

Embodying tools and fake body parts: what does that mean?

Abstract

Scientists have long questioned the origin of the exquisite human mastery of tools. How do we manage controlling a tool as skillfully as a hand? Grasping objects with tools is a major challenge for the motor system, in that the control of the hand needs to be transferred to the prehensile part of the tool. I will present findings suggesting that motor control is not merely distalized from the fingers to a grabber prongs: rather, when we use tools to grasp objects, the body of the tool is incorporated into our arm representation. Sensing through tools also challenges the somatosensory system heavily. I will present recent findings showing that distalisation does not apply to tool sensing either. We can localize impacts on the entire surface of a hand-held rod with great accuracy, and we may do so by repurposing body-based somatosensory processes. Together, these findings indicate that rather than mere distal links between the hand and environment, tools are treated by the nervous system as sensorimotor extensions of the body. The fil rouge through my presentation will consist in trying to pinpoint, both theoretically and empirically, what it means “to embody” tools, and whether embodying tools and other body parts may rely on the same mechanisms.

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Friday seminar organized with the support of Bordeaux Neurocampus