Rachel Stewart

Honours Student
Department of Psychology and Counselling
School of Psychology and Public Health
La Trobe University

I am interested in the relationship between perception and reality, and in our ability to distort reality via perceptual illusions. We reason that these perceptive processes must occur for adaptive reasons, and yet we do not fully understand them. How far we can stretch the limits of reality, yet still accept what we perceive to be true?

In terms of body ownership, decades of research has demonstrated that we appear able to adopt body parts that are not our own into our temporary body schema. Arguments persist about whether this is a top-down or bottom-up process. This year I will be looking at the effects of threat on body ownership plasticity, and exploring the underlying cognitive and sensory processes.