During the last decade, philosophical, psychological and neurobiological approaches to the self have increasingly overcome their disciplinary constraints and entered into a productive dialogue. Different levels of self-awareness such as the 'core' or 'minimal self' and the 'extended' or 'narrative self' have been distinguished and investigated from a phenomenological, developmental and neurocognitive perspective. In this context, disorders of self-experience have also attracted growing attention. The concept of embodiment may serve as a crucial junction for integrating these different approaches into a common framework.

This idea has inspired the European Marie-Curie Research Training Network "Disorders and Coherence of the Embodied Self" (DISCOS), a consortium of 10 European research facilities which organizes this conference. The first international conference in the context of DISCOS, which took place in Heidelberg, November 2008, aimed at creating an interdisciplinary forum for the exchange of ideas on the themes of embodiment, self-awareness and its disorders. Special emphasis was placed on

• the interplay of biological and social factors for establishing self-coherence
• the relevance of intersubjectivity and intercorporeality for the development of the self
• neuropsychiatric disorders of the embodied self, their nature and origins therapeutic and ethical consequences.

Please find the abstracts of the talks and posters here on this website, ordered according to the originating disciplines. The abstracts also can be found in all in the conference volume. The project will close with an international conference 2011 in Budapest, which will be announced here in the near future.