Matan Mazor

In the same way that having a body-schema allows humans and other animals to effectively control and monitor their physical bodies, having a mental self-model — a simplified description of one’s cognition and perception — allows agents to better control and monitor their mental states. I use a combination of behavioural testing, human neuroimaging and computational modelling to study how humans use this self-model to efficiently represent, learn, and flexibly adapt their behaviour to changing environments. Among the questions that keep me and my group busy are: what are the cognitive benefits of having an internal representation of one's own perception and cognition, and what happens when this representation is disturbed, biased, or not fully developed (for example, in young children)? In what way does a self-representation interact with memories of one's own actions and experiences, and with the feeling of being in control over one's actions? To what extent do people represent their own minds over and above a generic representation of minds? What is the scope of the human capacity to represent the hypothetical possibility of being someone else, and how does this capacity interact with moral decision-making and ethics?