Since September 2008, I am a postdoctorate researcher at the Multisensory Perception and Action Group (NWG Ernst) at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany. I am currently working on perceptual learning of body image and proprioception, investigating "rubber hand" type scenarios using the methods of experimental psychophysics and virtual reality. I am looking at particular aspects of multisensory/sensorimotor integration and whether they follow regularities that can be described in a Bayesian formal framework, or how human perceptual estimates perform in comparison with maximum likelihood or other statistically optimal formal frameworks.

My background is in simulation modelling. I did my PhD at the Centre of Computational Neuroscience and Robotics (CCNR) at the University of Sussex, UK, where I remain as visiting researcher. I investigated the use of Evolutionary Robotics simulation models in the study of human cognition and behaviour. Evolutionary Robotics is a closed-loop modelling technique that is particularly suited to describe, analyse and understand possible brain-body-environment interaction dynamics that are involved in solving particular sensorimotor tasks. Such closed-loop dynamical modelling is different and in many ways complementary to more traditional open-loop modelling approaches such as the Bayesian approach I use in my current work.

Other laboratories in which I have worked are the Ikegami Laboratory (Complex Systems and Artificial Life) at the University of Tokyo, the Cognitive Research and Enactive Design (CRED) group at the UTC in France and the Intelligent Dynamical Systems (InDy) Group at the Fraunhofer IAIS in Germany (headed by Prof. Pasemann, does not exist anymore).

Ultimately, I think that a study of cogntion and perception that combines experimental methods and synthetic methods to describe both the sensorimotor dynamics (closed-loop, implicit) and the direct regularities in human response patterns (open-loop, explicit) is a promising route towards explaining effects in sensorimotor integration, multisensory integration and perceptual learning. Other interests of mine include more philosophical questions about the nature, origin and principles of mind, life and cognition. My opinions are largely in line with the constructivist-enactive approach that Francisco Varela and others have developed since the 1980s (and before), which is skeptical towards explanatory reductionism and notions of mind as computation/representation and emphasises the role of embodiment, situatedness, dynamics, organismic organisation and lived experience. These convictions and the curiosity how we construct our world to be so coherent and so plastic at the same time are the driving forces behind my research.

Please consult my research page for details and references on different projects.