Research seminar organized by AHRC Large Grant Rethinking the Senses: Uniting the Philosophy and Neuroscience of Perception.
Speaker: Professor Yann Coello, Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Neuropsychology, University of Lille
Commentator: Cressida Gaukroger (UCL)
In the Research Unit in Cognitive and Affective Sciences, we have recently performed a series of psychophysical and brain imaging studies together with neuropsychological investigations of brain-lesioned patients to demonstrate that perception is to be considered as an active process that requires combining sensory signals with information from the body and the action system. The influence of the motor system on perception will be highlighted in the domain of spatial processing in object-oriented behaviors. Furthermore, I will also demonstrate that motor coding of space influences cognitive processes in social interaction and language comprehension. As a whole, these data support the embodied framework of perception and cognition suggesting that ideomotor representations contribute to making sense to the perceptual, conceptual and social world.