Email Address: [email protected]
Dr Dalila Burin is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie/Human+ programme fellow from the Computer Science and Engineering Research Strand. She is based in the ADAPT Centre and at the Department of Computer Science and Statistics at TCD. She is working with her line managers, Dr. Rachel McDonnell (School of Computer Science and Statistics) and Dr. Nicholas Johnson (Department of Drama). Dalila is a cognitive neuroscientist. Her research focuses on the exploration of the bodily self consciusness, in terms of how our brain perceives and represents our own body, in normal and pathological conditions. She employes different paradigms, including subjective, behavioural (e.g., multisensory illusions), physiological measurements (e.g., EMG) and brain imaging (e.g., fNIRS) techniques, but in the last years she predominantly exploited the amazing possiblities offered by immersive virtual reality (IVR). Dalila’s project at TCD starts from the idea, developed in her previous studies, that the manipulation of certain visual somatic or motor features of the virtual body (or avatar) can show measurable beneficial consequences on the real body: for example, a person sitting still but looking at the own virtual body moving, will react consistently with the virtual movements (e.g., the heart rate increases). This effect can induce other consequences, such as cognitive and physiological improvements. Her current project at the TCD entitled “BStrongBSmart” follows up from those results and deeply explore the potential motor (muscular activity) and social (cognitive biases) effects of the immersive virtual experience. Those results may contribute to current theoretical models of motor control but also provide new insight for rehabilitation strategies. Before coming to Dublin, Dalila was a PhD student in neuroscience at the University of Turin (Italy) and then she was Assistant Professor at Tohoku University (Japan).
