Henrik Ehrsson: Photo: Sören Vilks.

Henrik Ehrsson

Professor

Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience.

About me

Born in Sweden 1972, I studied medicine and obtained my PhD from Karolinska Institutet. After a four-year postdoc at The Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London, I became an assistant professor at Karolinska Institutet in 2008, and was appointed full professor in 2013.

I have published over 85 original peer-reviewed scientific works, including several articles in leading scientific journals such as Science, Neuron, PNAS, Current Biology, Nature Communications, PNAS, eLife and The Journal of Neuroscience. According to Web of Science (October 4th 2018), these works have been cited 6808 times and my H-index is 44.

Research description

I am a cognitive neuroscientist interested in the problem of how we come to sense that we own our body. I considers the identification of multisensory mechanisms by which the central nervous system distinguishes between sensory signals from one's body and those from the environment as the key to solving this problem. By clarifying how the normal brain produces a sense of ownership of one's body, I believe that we can learn to project ownership onto artificial bodies and simulated virtual ones. This research could even enable two people to have the experience of swapping bodies with one another. The multisensory model of body ownership that continues to be developed by our research group is already being used in the field of neuro-prosthetics and by the virtual reality research community, thereby establishing opportunities for important clinical and industrial applications.

My research group is presented here.

Academic honours, awards and prizes