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About

Polona Pozeg is a cognitive neuroscientist whose pioneering research explores the neural and perceptual foundations of self-consciousness, body ownership, and the boundaries of the self. Her most influential work, the 2014 study "Neurological and Robot-Controlled Induction of an Apparition" (148 citations), demonstrated that sensorimotor conflicts can reliably induce the eerie sensation of a phantom presence—a breakthrough linking robotics, neurology, and the science of self-awareness. In her highly cited 2015 paper (80 citations), Pozeg revealed that voluntary self-touch enhances the sense of body ownership, highlighting how multisensory integration of motor, tactile, and proprioceptive signals shapes our bodily self. More recently, her 2020 study (20 citations) used robotically controlled sensorimotor conflicts to experimentally model thought insertion, a hallmark of psychosis, offering a novel method to investigate the mechanisms underlying altered states of consciousness. By combining robotics, virtual reality, and psychophysics, Pozeg’s work provides profound insights into how the brain constructs the experience of a unified self—and how that construction can break down. Her research is essential reading for students and scholars interested in consciousness, embodiment, and the intersection of technology and neuroscience.