We want to figure out what our affective touch experiences will look like in an ever more digital world. From interactions in virtual reality (VR) to next generation haptic technologies that allow us to touch and be touched at a distance, our interdisciplinary research relies on collaborative efforts between cognitive neuroscientists, psychologists, engineers and computer scientists. Current projects include using immersive VR environments that allow for so-called pseudohaptics, an illusion of physical contact through audiovisual cues and incorporating thermal and vibrotactile cues to enhance experiences of digital social touch.

Interacting with others changes the way we feel and behave. Our group is interested in how interacting face-to-face or at a distance changes how we coordinate with both human and non-human agents. In particular, our current work is focused on how these interactions both depend on but also foster feelings of trust. Working together with VR developers and computer scientists, we are exploring the concept of copresence and what factors influence our experience of virtual spaces. We are also keen to discover how we behave and respond as group size increases. Across all of our projects, we are focused on how best to measure coupling across levels.

The ConTakt lab has forged forward to change the way we probe the neurocognitive underpinnings of how we interact with others. From developing the HandsOn app, a novel tool for more ecological testing of social touch preferences, to cutting edge approaches for handling multimodal data (neural, physiological and subjective reports) using rich computational models, we are dedicated to establishing gold standards for research. To that end, we are committed to open access and publish all datasets and analysis pipelines. For an example, read more for details on our virtual touch toolkits.