Project title

Interacting with Artificial Selves and Bodies in Natural and Virtual Environments

Research question

What is the effect of social interactions with human versus artificial agents on our sense of self and embodiment in natural versus virtual environments?

Project description

The past decades have seen a significant increase in the development and implementation of artificial agents such as robots, virtual reality characters and artificial intelligence. We spontaneously attribute intentionality and socialness to these agents. Despite the ubiquitous presence of these new forms of interactions and their increasing impact on our lives, little is known about how these emergent types of socializing affect our self-consciousness, embodiment and sense of self.

Anna Ciaunica will tackle this timely and neglected issue. She brings together an interdisciplinary team of world-leading experts and rising young researchers in philosophy and neuroscience. Specifically, they will examine the contrast between socially interacting with Human versus Artificial Agents, and its impact on our sense of self, embodiment and self-identity.

The team aims to show that contrasting self-consciousness and socialness in human-human agents interacting dyads, compared with human-artificial agent dyads, may help us to unveil core features of our human nature and its fundamental building blocks.

Selected publications

  • Ciaunica, A., Levin, M., Rosas, F. E., & Friston, K. (2023). Nested Selves: Self-Organization and Shared Markov Blankets in Prenatal Development in Humans. Topics in cognitive science, 10.1111/tops.12717. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12717
  • Ciaunica, A., & Levin, M. (2022). The Brain is not Mental! Coupling Neuronal and Immune Cellular Processing in Human Organisms. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/fgcy5. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience.
  • Ciaunica A, Seth A, Limanowski J, Hesp C, Friston KJ. (2022) I overthink-Therefore I am not: An active inference account of altered sense of self and agency in depersonalisation disorder. Conscious Cogn. 2022 May;101:103320. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2022.103320