Keynote speaker: Transforming the self through embodiment and agency

Summary form only given. Immersive virtual reality (IVR) has been successfully exploited in the study of body ownership illusions - a topic that contributes to the question of how the human brain represents the body. This is made possible because with a head-tracked wide field of view head-mounted display, and other tracking and stimulation equipment, we can visually substitute a person´s real body by a virtual body (VB), that is coincident in space with the real body, moves synchronously with it, and where visuotactile synchronisation is possible with respect to seen events on the VB and the corresponding stimuli felt on the real one. Such a process of virtual embodiment typically gives rise to the perceptual illusion of ownership with respect to the virtual body. Here we explore how IVR may be used to transform the self, providing examples ranging from illusory time travel, psychological problems and illusory agency.