[...]... contributed to our knowledge of visual cognition In the field of motor cognition, motor imagery, the ability to generate a conscious image of the acting self, began to be seriously considered only in the late 1980s One of the reasons for this delay is that, unlike in visual imagery, there is no clear reference in motor imagery with which the image can be compared: motor images are private events in the sense... areas, together with areas in the motor system (e.g premotor cortex), account for what we have called ‘pragmatic’ representations These are responsible for representing self- generated (overt as well as covert) actions, and the actions of other agents, when these actions have to be understood, learned, replicated or imitated Other brain areas are also involved in perceiving and recognizing actions of other... instructed to look for 5 s at the specified target Immediately afterwards, they were blindfolded and instructed to either walk, or to imagine walking to that target In both conditions, they held a chronometer which they started when they began the task and stopped when they finished it The main result was that the subjects took, on average, the same time to achieve the physical and the mental task In the. .. historical thread The history of the concept of action representations starts at the end of the nineenth century, when motor physiology was dominated by the sensorymotor theory of action generation This model, however, turned out to be unsatisfactory for the generation of voluntary movements In contradistinction to reflex actions which are responses to the occurrence of external stimuli, voluntary actions. .. present events The notion of a mind to world direction of causation stresses the fact that action representations are anticipatory, not only with respect to the execution of the action itself, but also with respect to the state of the world that will be created by the action As a matter of fact, insofar as action representations are the key feature of motor cognition, it follows that motor cognition in... resulted from excitation of the same cerebral centers as the corresponding actual sensation In the domain of motor images, he made the remark that the state of the motor centers influences the possibility of generating a motor image For example, he found it impossible to generate the image of pronouncing the letter b if he kept his mouth wide open: this was because the motor system, he thought, cannot... request and could imitate gestures of others However, they were impaired in naming the gestures performed by the examiner These patients with lesions in the ventral stream, although they had retained the ability to use and assemble motor engrams, had lost the ability to extract the meaning of the gestures they saw others making We will devote a full section to the dual mode of action perception/understanding... the motor schema ‘drink’ which accounts for the action of drinking can be decomposed into simpler motor schemas such as ‘reach’ for a glass and ‘grasp’ it; the motor schema ‘grasp’ includes still simpler ones (e.g ‘close fingers’) At the other end, the motor schema ‘drink’ is embedded in a more complex one (e.g ‘have dinner’), and so on Most of the above theories hold that schemas or engrams are stored... 6 The Simulation Hypothesis of Motor Cognition 129 6.1 Motor simulation A hypothesis for explaining action representations 130 6.2 Motor simulation and social cognition 143 6.3 Motor simulation and language understanding 151 Concluding Remarks 165 References 173 Author Index 199 Subject Index 207 Chapter 1 Representations for actions In this introductory chapter, we try to provide a description of the. .. through the neuroimaging technique In the subsequent sections of this book, I will use the term motor intention as an alternative for intention in action In my view, the term motor intention (Jeannerod 1994) better captures the proximity of the intention to its direct consequence, a goal-directed movement Another reason for this choice is that the term motor intention seems to account better for the notion . with other selves. Our purpose here is to examine what actions can reveal about the self who produces them, and how they can influence the other selves who perceive them. Studying the way actions. 121 6 The Simulation Hypothesis of Motor Cognition 129 6.1 Motor simulation. A hypothesis for explaining action representations 130 6.2 Motor simulation and social cognition 143 6.3 Motor simulation. understood, learned, imitated, attributed or, in a word, the way they are represented, is the program of the new and rapidly expanding field of motor cognition. Motor cognition has its historical