Aikaterini Fotopoulou

University College London | UCL · Division of Psychology and Language Sciences

Thermosensory signals may contribute to the sense of body ownership, but their role remains highly debated. We test this assumption within the framework of pathological body ownership, hypothesising that skin temperature and thermoception differ between right-hemisphere stroke patients with and without Disturbed Sensation of Ownership (DSO) for the...

Background Interoception, the sensing, awareness and regulation of physiological states, is crucial for wellbeing and mental health. Behavioural interventions targeting interoception exist, but Randomised Control Trials (RCTs) testing efficacy remain limited. The present, preregistered (ISRCTN16762367) RCT tested the novel Interoceptive iNsight and...

Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) is crucial for enhancing research quality, relevance, and addressing health inequalities. PPI ensures that studies tackle relevant and meaningful questions, have a design and methodology that are feasible and acceptable, and build trust and engagement in research among marginalised communities. However, the need...

Human affective touch is known to be beneficial for social-emotional interactions and has a therapeutic effect. For touch initiated by robotic entities, richer affective affordance is a critical enabler to unlock its potential in social-emotional interactions and especially in care and therapeutic applications. Simulating the attributes of particul...

There is growing concern about the impact of declining political trust on democracies. Psychological research has introduced the concept of epistemic (mis)trust as a stable disposition acquired through development, which may influence our sociopolitical engagement. Given trust’s prominence in current politics, we examined the relationship between e...

Patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) typically hold altered beliefs about their body that they struggle to update, including global, prospective beliefs about their ability to know and regulate their body and particularly their interoceptive states. While clinical questionnaire studies have provided ample evidence on the role of such beliefs in the...

The neuropsychological disorder of anosognosia for hemiplegia (AHP) can offer unique insights into the neurocognitive processes of body consciousness and representation. Previous studies have found associations between selective social cognition deficits and anosognosia. In this study, we examined how such social cognition deficits may directly int...

Touch offers important non-verbal possibilities for socioaffective communication. Yet most digital communications lack capabilities regarding exchanging affective tactile messages (tactile emoticons). Additionally, previous studies on tactile emoticons have not capitalised on knowledge about the affective effects of certain mechanoreceptors in the...

Touch is a key channel for conveying meaning in social interactions. The affective quality of touch and its effects on well‐being are shaped by relational context (relationship between touch giver vs. recipient) and person variables (e.g. adult attachment style). Yet, such effects have not been explored in relation to the meaning ascribed to touch....

Restricted interpersonal touch experiences, for instance due to COVID-19 social distancing measures, results in detrimental effects on anxiety, loneliness and psychological well-being. Yet, interventions capable of mitigating the impact of social touch deprivation, as experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, remain insufficient. In this study, con...

Cosmetic surgery is ever more affordable and accessible, but carries physical and psychological risks. Yet, no study to date has directly examined risk-taking behaviour under controlled conditions, beyond self-report and in relation to cosmetic surgery attitudes. We used the Balloon Analogue Risk Task and advanced computational modelling to measure...

Our emotional state can influence how we understand other people's emotions, leading to biases in social understanding. Yet emotional egocentric biases in specific relationships such as parent-child dyads, where not only understanding but also emotional and bodily regulation is key, remain relatively unexplored. To investigate these biases and cont...

There has been growing interest in interoception (broadly defined as the sense of the physiological state of the body) as a transdiagnostic factor contributing to mental health, wellbeing and psychopathology. Thus, we systematically searched and reviewed evidence regarding the role of interoception in anxiety, depression and psychosis. Integrated t...

Patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) typically hold aberrant beliefs about their body that they struggle to update, including global, prospective beliefs about their ability to know and regulate their body and particularly their interoceptive states. While clinical, questionnaire studies have provided ample evidence on the role of such beliefs in th...

The understanding of eating disorders is hindered by the lack of integration between existing psychosocial and neurobiological approaches. We address this problem by developing a novel transdiagnostic and computational approach to eating restriction decisions. We first validated a novel paradigm which extends an established monetary risk task to in...

Touch offers important non-verbal possibilities for socioaffective communication. Yet most digital communications lack capabilities regarding exchanging affective tactile messages (tactile emoticons). Additionally, previous studies on tactile emoticons have not capitalised on knowledge about the affective effects of certain mechanoreceptors in the...

Disturbed interoception (i.e., the sensing, awareness, and regulation of internal body signals) has been found across several mental disorders, leading to the development of interoception-based interventions (IBIs). Searching PubMed and PsycINFO, we conducted the first systematic review of randomised-controlled trials (RCTs) investigating the effic...

Social support from family and friends, albeit associated with beneficial health effects, does not always help to cope with pain. This may be because humans elicit mixed expectations of social support and evaluative judgment. The present studies aimed to test whether pet dogs are a more beneficial source of support in a painful situation than human...

Following positive social exchanges, the neural representation of interactive space around the body (peripersonal space; PPS) expands, while we also feel consciously more comfortable being closer to others (interpersonal distance; ID). However, it is unclear how relational traits, such as attachment styles, interact with the social malleability of...

Depersonalisation disorder (DPD) is a psychopathological condition characterised by a feeling of detachment from one's own body and surrounding, and it is understood as emerging from the downregulation of interoceptive afferents. However, the precise mechanisms that drive this ‘interoceptive silencing’ are yet to be clarified. Here we present a com...

Disturbed interoception (i.e., the sensing, awareness, and regulation of internal body signals) has been found across several mental disorders, leading to the development of interoception-based interventions (IBIs). Searching PubMed and PsycINFO, we conducted the first systematic review of randomised-controlled trials (RCTs) investigating the effic...

Previous studies suggest a stronger influence of visual signals on body image in individuals with eating disorders (EDs) than healthy controls; however, the influence of other exteroceptive sensory signals remains unclear. Here we used an illusion relying on auditory (exteroceptive) signals to manipulate body size/weight perceptions and investigate...

Our perception of our personal space extends beyond the body to incorporate the space where inter-actions with the environment occur, i.e. peripersonal space (PPS), and the distance we feel comforta-ble in maintaining while interacting with other people, termed interpersonal space. Studies suggest that after positive interpersonal exchanges, PPS ex...

Personal neglect is a disorder in the perception and representation of the body that causes the patients to behave as if the contralesional side of their body does not exist. This clinical condition has not been adequately investigated in the past as it has been considered a symptom of unilateral spatial neglect, which has mainly been studied with...

In this chapter, we build upon empirical findings on the neurological syndrome of anosognosia for hemiplegia (lack of awareness into one’s paralysis; AHP) and recent neuroscientific theories of self-awareness to propose that the experience of ones’ self entails at least two normally integrated levels of inference. Namely, inferences about the here-...

Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is an eating disorder with high mortality and morbidity rates, partly due to treatment resistance and high relapse rates. Treatment adherence and recovery has been found to be hindered by insight deficits, a lack of appreciation of one’s illness, or its consequences, most frequent in restrictive AN. However, to date, insight d...

Despite the importance of touch in human–human relations, research in affective tactile practices is in its infancy, lacking in-depth understanding needed to inform the design of remote digital touch communication. This article reports two qualitative studies that explore tactile affective communication in specific social contexts, and the bi-direc...

The therapeutic effects of touch have been long reported. However, in the field of psychotherapy touch is the exception and talking therapies are the norm. Critically, evidence on clients’ experiences and perspectives of touch during psychotherapy is scarce and reliant on small samples. Moreover, despite converging evidence on the associations betw...

Neuropsychological disturbances in the sense of limb ownership provide unique opportunities to study the neurocognitive basis of body ownership. Previous small sample studies that showed discrete cortical lesions cannot explain why multisensory, affective, and cognitive manipulations alter disownership symptoms. We tested the novel hypothesis that...

In recent decades, the research traditions of (first-person) embodied cognition and of (third-person) social cognition have approached the study of self-awareness with relative independence. However, neurological disorders of self-awareness offer a unifying perspective to empirically investigate the contribution of embodiment and social cognition t...

Our emotional state can influence how we understand other people’s emotions, leading to biases in social understanding. Yet these biases have not been studied in specific relationships such as parent-child dyads, where not only understanding but also emotional and bodily regulation is key. We first conducted two experiments in adult stranger’s dyad...

We reviewed publicly available information from the top 50 journals worldwide in psychology and neuroscience to infer the proportions of editors by gender and country of affiliation. In both fields, the proportions of male and female editors differed significantly, both across editorial roles and within various role categories. Moreover, for 76% of...

We focus on social touch as a paradigmatic case of the embodied, cognitive, and metacognitive processes involved in social, affective regulation. Social touch appears to contribute three interrelated but distinct functions to affective regulation. First, it regulates affects by fulfilling embodied predictions about social proximity and attachment....

Intranasal oxytocin is attracting attention as a potential treatment for several brain disorders due to promising preclinical results. However, translating findings to humans has been hampered by remaining uncertainties about its pharmacodynamics and the methods used to probe its effects in the human brain. Using a dose-response design (9, 18 and 3...

Personal neglect is a disorder in the perception and representation of the body that causes the patients to behave as if the contralesional side of their body does not exist. This clinical condition has not been adequately investigated in the past as it has been considered a symptom of unilateral spatial neglect, which has mainly been studied with...

People tend to evaluate their own traits and abilities favourably and such favourable self-perceptions extend to attractiveness. However, the exact mechanism underlying this self-enhancement bias remains unclear. One possibility could be the identification with attractive others through blurring of self-other boundaries. Across two experiments, we...

Previous research suggests that there may be a relationship between the timing of motor events and phases of the cardiac cycle. This relationship has thus far only been researched using simple isolated movements such as key-presses in reaction-time tasks and only in a single subject acting alone. Other research has shown both movement and cardiac c...

Social touch has positive effects on social affiliation and stress alleviation. However, its ubiquitous presence in human life does not allow the study of social touch deprivation ‘in the wild’. Nevertheless, COVID-19-related restrictions such as social distancing allowed the systematic study of the degree to which social distancing affects tactile...

In recent decades, the research traditions of (first-person) embodied cognition and of (third-person) social cognition have approached the study of self-awareness with relative independence. However, neurological disorders of self-awareness offer a unifying perspective to empirically investigate the contribution of embodiment and social cognition t...

Affective touch is important for maintaining emotional bonds and providing comfort. In this pilot study, we developed a silicone pneumatic soft robotic haptic device (S-CAT) to provide affective touch and compared its performance with commonly used brush and human affective touch. The S-CAT device simulates the attributes of CT-optimal affective to...

We focus on social touch as a paradigmatic case of a unifying perspective on the embodied, cognitive and metacognitive processes involved in social, affective regulation. Social touch appears to have three interrelated but distinct functions in affective regulation. First, it regulates affects by fulfilling embodied expectations about social proxim...

In his paper “Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science,” Andy Clark seminally proposed that the brain's job is to predict whatever information is coming “next” on the basis of prior inputs and experiences. Perception fundamentally subserves survival and self-preservation in biological agents, such as hu...

The syndrome of anosognosia for hemiplegia, or the lack of awareness for one’s paralysis following right hemisphere stroke, can provide unique insights into the neurocognitive mechanisms of self-awareness. Yet it remains unclear whether anosognosia for hemiplegia is a modality-specific deficit of sensorimotor monitoring, or whether domain-general p...

Peripersonal space (PPS) is the space immediately surrounding the body, conceptualised as a sensory-motor interface between body and environment. PPS size differs between individuals and contexts, with intrapersonal traits and states, as well as social factors having a determining role on the size of PPS. Testosterone plays an important role in reg...

The idea that our perceptions in the here and now are influenced by prior events and experiences has recently received substantial support and attention from the proponents of the Predictive Processing (PP) and Active Inference framework in philosophy and computational neuroscience. In this paper we look at how perceptual experiences get off the gr...

In a recent study, Lush et al. (Nat Commun 11, 4853, 2020) claimed that they found “substantial relationships” between hypnotizability and experimental measures of the rubber hand illusion. The authors proposed that hypnotizable participants control their phenomenology to meet task expectations arising from the experimental paradigm. They further s...

Neuropsychological disturbances in the sense of limb ownership (DSO) provide a unique opportunity to study the neurocognitive basis of the sense of body ownership. Previous small sample studies focused on discrete cortical lesions and modular accounts, which cannot explain the modulations of DSO by multisensory, affective and cognitive manipulation...

In his paper ‘Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science’ Andy Clark (2013) seminally proposed that the brain’s job is to predict whatever information is coming ‘next’ on the basis of prior inputs and experiences. Perception fundamentally subserves survival and self-preservation in biological agents such...

Introduction A three-level model of interoception has recently been defined. We aim to study the interoceptive processing in individuals with functional motor disorder (FMD). Methods Twenty-two patients with FMD were compared to 23 healthy controls. They underwent a protocol measuring different levels of interoception including: accuracy (an heart...

Social touch has positive effects on social affiliation and stress alleviation. However, its ubiquitous presence in human life does not allow the study of social touch deprivation ‘in the wild’. Nevertheless, COVID-19-related restrictions such as social distancing allowed the systematic study of the degree to which social distancing affects tactile...

While certain metrics of diversity have seen great improvement in recent years in academic psychology and neuroscience, unequal representation remains for many positions of power. Here, we reviewed publicly available information in order to infer the proportion of editors by gender and their country of affiliation in the top 50 journals worldwide i...

Introduction: Anosognosia for hemiplegia (AHP) is a condition in which patients with paralysis are unaware of their motor deficits. Research into AHP is important for improving its treatment and providing insight into the neurocognitive mechanism of motor awareness. Unfortunately, most studies use assessments with widely recognized limitations. Th...

Lay abstract: More research has been conducted on how autistic people understand and interpret other people's emotions, than on how autistic people experience their own emotions. The experience of emotion is important however, because it can relate to difficulties like anxiety and depression, which are common in autism. In neurotypical adults and...

The idea that whatever we perceive now is influenced by whatever we perceived before lies at the core of Predictive Processing (PP) theories in philosophy and computational neuroscience. If this is so, then it becomes crucial to look at how perception, cognition and actions get off the ground from square one, in utero. Here we examine how humans se...

In his seminal paper ‘Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science’ Andy Clark (2013) argued that the brain’s job is to predict whatever information is coming ‘next’ on the basis of the prior information perceived before. In this paper we suggest that term ‘next’ should be understood not only at the tempora...

Previous studies have highlighted that affective touch delivered at slow velocities (1–10 cm/s) enhances body-part embodiment during multisensory illusions, yet its role towards whole-body embodiment is less established. Across two experiments, we investigated the role of affective touch towards subjective embodiment of a whole mannequin body withi...

Aberrations of self-experience are considered a core feature of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). While prominent etiologic accounts of BPD, such as the mentalization based approach, appeal to the developmental constitution of self in early infant-caregiver environments, they often rely on a conception of self that is not explicitly articulate...

The syndrome of anosognosia for hemiplegia (AHP), or the lack of awareness for one's paralysis following right hemisphere stroke, can provide unique insights into the neurocognitive mechanisms of self-awareness. Yet it remains unclear whether AHP is a modality-specific deficit of sensorimotor monitoring, or whether domain-general processes of atten...

Self–other distinction (SOD) refers to the ability to distinguish one’s own body, actions, and mental representations from those of others. Problems with SOD are considered to be a key feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD). However, empirical studies on SOD in BPD are scarce. Here, we present a study providing preliminary support for the...

Erogenous zones of the body are sexually arousing when touched. Previous investigations of erogenous zones were restricted to the effects of touch on one’s own body. However, sexual interactions do not just involve being touched, but also involve touching a partner and mutually looking at each other’s bodies. We take a novel interpersonal approach...

Eating decisions depend on both appetitive and social motivation processes but the interactions between these motivations are poorly understood. We examine how women from nonclinical and clinical samples with variable levels of eating restriction make value-based decisions under uncertainty when monetary values are coupled with values related to bo...

Disruptions in reward processing and anhedonia have long been observed in Anorexia Nervosa (AN). Interoceptive deficits have also been observed in AN, including reduced tactile pleasure. However, the extent to which this tactile anhedonia is specifically liked to an impairment in a specialized, interoceptive C-tactile system originating at the peri...

Peripersonal space (PPS) is the space immediately surrounding the body, conceptualised as a sensory-motor interface between body and environment. PPS size differs between individuals and contexts, with intrapersonal traits and states, as well as social factors having a determining role on the size of PPS. Testosterone plays an important role in reg...

Recently, a monothematic delusion of body ownership due to brain damage (i.e., the embodiment of someone else’s body part within the patient’s sensorimotor system) has been extensively investigated. Here we aimed at defining in-depth the clinical features and the neural correlates of the delusion. Ninety-six stroke patients in a sub-acute or chroni...

Right hemisphere stroke can impair the ability to recognise one’s contralesional body parts as belonging to one’s self. The study of this so-called ‘disturbed sense of limb ownership’ can provide unique insights into the neurocognitive mechanisms of body ownership. Here, we address a hypothesis built upon experimental studies on body ownership in h...

Could nose-to-brain pathways mediate the effects of peptides such as oxytocin (OT) on brain physiology when delivered intranasally? We address this question by contrasting two methods of intranasal administration (a standard nasal spray, and a nebulizer expected to improve OT deposition in nasal areas putatively involved in direct nose-to-brain tra...