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About

Sotaro Shimada is a leading researcher in cognitive neuroscience, specializing in the mechanisms of self-awareness, body ownership, and agency. His work sits at the intersection of experimental psychology and robotics, exploring how the brain constructs the sense of self through visuo-motor and visuo-tactile integration. Shimada is best known for pioneering the "Robot Hand Illusion" (RoHI), a paradigm that extends the classic rubber hand illusion to robotic and virtual hands. His seminal 2016 paper on the RoHI under delayed visual feedback (99 citations) established a critical framework for dissociating the senses of ownership ("this is my hand") and agency ("I am moving this hand"), showing that temporal delays selectively disrupt agency while preserving ownership. His 2009 study on sensorimotor deactivation during observation of robotic actions (47 citations) further revealed how the brain distinguishes human from non-human agents. More recently, Shimada has advanced into the field of body augmentation, investigating how the brain incorporates supernumerary robotic limbs into the bodily self (2024). His work, consistently published in high-impact journals, has profound implications for neurorehabilitation, prosthetics, and human-robot interaction, making him a key figure in understanding the neural foundations of selfhood.