Mallory J. Feldman, PhD
Mallory J. Feldman, PhD
I am a psychologist studying how people sense and make sense of their bodies, with implications for human health and social decision-making across the lifespan.
Research themes
A mechanistic account linking body and mind
All day, every day, our brains are awash in sensations. These sensations come from familiar sources like our eyes and ears — but also from the tissues and systems within our bodies. The brain integrates information from these sources into ongoing experience, fundamentally shaping our perceptions of self and world.
Increasingly, neuroscience shows that the brain does not passively read out sensory signals. Instead, it anticipates sensory events and compares predictions against incoming information. My work contributes to mounting evidence that the brain’s predictions about the state of the body are not one input among many, but foundational to mental life, decision-making, and behavior.
Read more:Feldman, Bliss-Moreau & Lindquist · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · 2024
Individual differences in body perception
Just as “vision” refers to the perception of light from outside the body, “interoception” refers to the perception of sensations from within the body. Just like people differ in their visual acuity and other visual traits, they also differ in their access and relationship to their bodily states. Because signals from the body do not have fixed meanings, I am interested in what explains how, when, and for whom bodily states contribute to our perceptions of self and world.
Read more:Feldman, Ma & Lindquist · in Interoception: A Comprehensive Guide, Springer · 2024
Changing bodies, changing world
The world is always changing around us: fueled by technological disruption, geopolitical turbulence, climate instability, and changing social norms. Our bodies also change. This unfolds slowly over time and can be described as “biological aging,” but also in spurts and starts — as in puberty, pregnancy, or following acute illness or stress. I am interested in how our changing bodies contribute to human mental life, particularly given that times of major physiological change typically coincide with other kinds of psychological and social restructuring.
Read more:MacCormack, Feldman, Bonar & Lindquist · Cambridge University Press · 2023