I am eager to join the Hong Kong Laureate Forum to engage with leading scientists and explore advances in neuroscience, embodied cognition, and AI-driven medicine. Currently, I am a postdoctoral researcher at Karolinska Institute, building on my Ph.D. in Health Psychology from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. My research integrates neuroimaging, brain stimulation, and virtual reality to study body ownership and self-perception—key to cognition, rehabilitation, and AI-human interaction.

Previously, I investigated reward processing deficits in food addiction and developed neuromodulation interventions for methamphetamine use disorder, with findings published in Brain Stimulation and Frontiers in Psychiatry. Now, I extend this expertise to embodied cognition, studying full-body and body-part ownership to show how self-perception exceeds the sum of its parts. These insights could advance AI-driven neuroprosthetics, stroke rehabilitation, and brain-machine interfaces.

The forum offers a unique opportunity to collaborate with experts in neuroscience, AI, and rehabilitation. I look forward to exchanging ideas and contributing to life sciences breakthroughs.

Body ownership refers to the perception of one’s body as one’s own. While localized sensory inputs (e.g., synchronized visual-tactile stimulation) induce ownership over specific body parts, full-body ownership extends beyond stimulated areas, suggesting a nonlinear relationship between localized and holistic ownership (O'Kane et al., 2024). A key question remains: does overall body ownership arise from a simple sum of localized ownership or require global integration?

Our current study explores this by manipulating "body plan holism" through controlled alterations in anatomical coherence. By swapping three body parts, we test whether full-body ownership depends on structural integrity rather than mere accumulation of localized ownership experiences. We hypothesize that disrupting spatial arrangement will impair the full-body illusion while preserving part ownership, supporting the role of structural configuration in holistic body perception.

Additionally, we aim to identify the neural correlates involved and validate them through neuromodulation. These findings have important clinical implications for treating body perception disorders, neurorehabilitation, and prosthetic embodiment.