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Embodied Cognition, Dynamic Field Theory of

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Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience

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Cognition and control; Neural population models for

Definition

The insight that cognition is grounded in sensorimotor processing and shares many properties with motor control, captured by the notion of “embodied cognition,” has been a starting point for neural process models of cognition. Neural Field models represent spaces relevant to cognition, including physical space, perceptual feature spaces, or movement parameters in activation fields that may receive input from the sensory surfaces and may project onto motor systems. Peaks of activation are units of representation. Their positive levels of activation indicate the instantiation of a representation, while their location specifies metric values along the feature dimensions. By ensuring that peaks are stable states (attractors) of a neural activation dynamics, cognitive processes are endowed with the stability properties required when cognition is linked to sensory and motor processes. Instantiations of cognitive...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut fuer Neuroinformatik, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, NRW, Germany

    Prof. Gregor Schöner

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  1. Prof. Gregor Schöner
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Correspondence to Gregor Schöner .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Dieter Jaeger

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Florida International University, Miami, Florida, USA

    Ranu Jung

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Schöner, G. (2014). Embodied Cognition, Dynamic Field Theory of. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_55-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_55-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-7320-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Biomedicine and Life SciencesReference Module Biomedical and Life Sciences

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