Virtual Bodies, Virtual Selves with Real Emotions

Traditionally some of the core visual processes underlying social interaction abilities have been difficult to study because methodological as well as ethical issues stand in the way of recreating naturalistic interactions in the lab. The use of avatars in combination with virtual reality-based experiments now offers a unique chance to bring the ethological dimension of human to human interaction in focus. In this talk I will report on recent experiments in our lab that have used VR in behavioral and brain imaging experiments. We will also address the issue of avatar realism and ask whether overall realism of avatars is the driver of the affective experience or whether the selective presence of certain midlevel visual features is the critical factor.