BRNet 2026 — Conference Landscape & Strategic Notes

BRNet 2026 — Conference Landscape & Strategic Notes

Prepared ahead of attendance at the 8th Annual BRNet Meeting, Padua, June 8–9 2026. Related: BRNet 2026 Abstract

---

Program Overview

~12 presenters across two days plus three keynotes. Topics cluster into five areas:

1. Eating disorders / body image distortion (dominant)

• Manja Engel (Utrecht) — feedback-based updating of body size in AN
• Gabriele Vercelli (Roma La Sapienza) — interoceptive conditioning for AN
• Alkistis Saramandi (UCL) — precision-weighted body belief updating in AN (computational psychiatry)
• Jamie Feusner (Toronto) (keynote) — neural/computational models of body image distortion in psychiatric disorders
• Anna L. Vlad (Verona) — body schema/rubber hand dissociation in Body Dysmorphic Disorder

2. Interoception

• Deniz Yilmaz (Max Planck School of Cognition) — interoceptive alterations in schizophrenia spectrum
• Martina Fanghella (Milan) — primary somatosensory cortex and emotion perception in autism

3. Predictive processing / computational models

• Saramandi, Feusner, and implicitly Litwin (multisensory correlation detector)

4. Proprioception / motor integration / neurological

• Michel Akselrod (HES-SO Valais-Wallis) — proprioception integration during stroke recovery
• Nicola Brunello (Bern) — body perception illusions with/without spinal cord injury
• Francesca Genovese (Turin) — early motor experience and somatosensory coding in cerebral palsy
• Michela Bassolino (HES-SO Valais-Wallis) (keynote) — tools, mechanisms, and new perspectives in neurological body perception

5. Body ownership, peripersonal space, self-presence

• Sara Coppi (Karolinska) — body ownership and pain remapping in peripersonal space
• Piotr Litwin (Warsaw) — temporal integration in the rubber hand illusion
• Maren Born (Lausanne) — embodying an infected virtual face (behavioral + immune)
• Olaf Blanke (EPFL) (keynote) — neuropsychiatry of invisible presences

ECR Award Talk

• Valeria C. Peviani (Hamburg-Eppendorf) — “From Sensation to Structure: Inferring the Body in Space”

---

Where We Sit

We are the only presenter working from a movement pedagogy / healthy populations / training angle. Almost everyone else is working in pathology or using illusion paradigms. That is both exposed and valuable — we are the most distinct voice in the room.

The dominant framing at this conference is distortion and disorder — body representation as something that breaks. Our contribution is fundamentally about body representation as something that is systematically undertrained in healthy populations and becomes legible only in a training context.

---

Closest to What We Do

1. Valeria C. Peviani — “From Sensation to Structure: Inferring the Body in Space” Closest alignment overall. “Sensation to structure” maps almost directly onto the D→A pathway, and spatial inference is SPA-D by another name. She’s working from a neuroscience angle but the conceptual territory is the same. She won the ECR award — the field’s own pick as a standout early-career voice.

2. Michel Akselrod — “Dynamic Integration of Body Representation and Proprioception During Stroke Recovery” PRO is explicitly proprioceptive discrimination. Akselrod is doing proprioception + body representation in rehabilitation — different clinical context but the construct overlaps directly. The stroke-recovery angle also gives a potential translation story for what PRO-D looks like when trained vs. broken.

3. Alkistis Saramandi — “The Petrified Body: A Novel Computational Psychiatry Approach to Body Belief Precision-Weighted Updating in AN” Precision-weighting / predictive processing is a natural theoretical bridge to the D→{A,U} structure. D is essentially what updates the priors — if sensory precision is low, beliefs don’t update. The NCA data (D as necessary condition for A and U) is almost a behavioral operationalization of what computational models are describing formally.

4. Gabriele Vercelli — “Targeting Body Representation Distortions in AN through Interoceptive Conditioning” Training-based interoceptive intervention in a clinical setting. INT component is the most overlapping territory. Vercelli is already doing conditioning — shared methodological orientation.

---

Most Likely to Be Receptive

Valeria C. Peviani — ECR, clearly thinking about mechanisms not just disorder categories. Spatial framing suggests she’d be interested in SPA-D and the trainability argument.

Alkistis Saramandi — Computational psychiatry people are almost always receptive to precision-matched behavioral data, because they’re used to working with impoverished datasets. NCA results (D as necessary condition) speak their language.

Michela Bassolino (keynote) — Her title says “tools, mechanisms, and new perspectives” — she’s explicitly interested in measurement and method. The assessment gap section (Figure 2 / PRO and SPA absent from all existing tools) is directly relevant to the tools conversation she’s opening.

Piotr Litwin — Multisensory correlation detector model = basic mechanism thinking. Someone working at that level is generally open to “what happens to this mechanism when you systematically train it?” Likely to engage with the trainability argument.

---

Must Definitely Check

Talk	Why
Valeria C. Peviani (ECR Award, Day 1 afternoon)	Closest conceptual alignment; field’s own ECR pick; spatial inference = SPA-D. If there’s one person to catch for a real conversation, it’s her.
Jamie Feusner keynote (Day 1 morning)	He’s setting the computational/neural frame for the whole conference. How he models body representation will signal how our framework lands with the audience — and where the friction will be.
Michela Bassolino keynote (Day 2 morning)	“Tools and new perspectives” is essentially our abstract. She’s giving the conceptual opening for the assessment gap argument. Worth listening carefully — if she identifies PRO/SPA as missing, we can reference it in conversations all day.
Alkistis Saramandi (Day 1 short talks)	D→A NCA data is the empirical version of precision-weighted updating in a healthy/training context. High potential for substantive exchange.

---

Program Schedule

Day 1 — June 8 | Aula Magna Galileo Galilei, Palazzo Bo, via VIII Febbraio 2

Time	Session
09:30–10:00	Registration
10:00–10:20	Welcome
10:20–11:05	Short Talks (Chair: Angela Favaro): Engel, Vercelli, Saramandi
11:05–12:00	Keynote: Jamie Feusner — When the Brain Misrepresents the Body
12:00–13:00	Free Lunch
13:00–15:00	Poster Session + Coffee Break
15:00–15:50	ECR Award (Chair: Catherine Preston): Valeria C. Peviani — From Sensation to Structure
15:50–16:35	Short Talks (Chair: Fabio Sambataro): Yilmaz, Fanghella, Coppi
16:35–17:00	Break
17:00–18:30	Steering committee meeting
19:00–22:00	Social Dinner — Caffè Pedrocchi (self-funded, registration required)

Day 2 — June 9 | Aula Morgagni, Policlinico Universitario, Via Giustiniani 2

Time	Session
09:00–10:00	ECR Event: Career options and EDI in Research
10:00–10:50	Keynote (Chair: Matthew Longo): Michela Bassolino — Body Perception in Neurological Disorders
10:50–11:30	Short Talks: Litwin, Vlad, Born
11:30–12:15	ECR Event (continued)
12:15–14:00	Free Lunch
14:00–14:50	Keynote (Chair: Andrea Serino): Olaf Blanke — Neuropsychiatry of Invisible Presences
14:50–15:35	Short Talks: Brunello, Akselrod, Genovese
15:35–16:30	Poster prize and closure panel

---

Strategic Note

The people most worth talking to are those who are dissatisfied with existing measurement tools (Bassolino, Peviani) or who are already thinking about updating mechanisms (Saramandi, Feusner) — because the poster’s sharpest claim is that the tools are wrong and the training pathway is the proof.

The healthy-populations framing will feel counterintuitive to most attendees, but it’s also what makes the work memorable in this room.