Could we use robots, instead of medicines, to cure mental illnesses? Olaf Blanke explains how. Olaf Blanke is founding director of the Center for Neuroprosthetics, Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Cognitive Neuroprosthetics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL). He also directs the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience at EPFL and is Professor of Neurology at the Department of Neurology at the University Hospital of Geneva. Blanke’s research is dedicated to the neuroscientific study of multisensory body perception and its relevance for self-consciousness by using a broad range of methods such as the neuropsychology, invasive and non-invasive electrophysiology, and brain imaging in healthy subjects, neurological and psychiatric patients. Most recently he has pioneered the joint use of engineering techniques such as robotics and virtual reality with techniques from cognitive neuroscience and their application to systems and cognitive neuroprosthetics and neuro-rehabilitation.
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