Many current neurophysiological, psychophysical, and psychological approaches to vision rest on the idea that when we see, the brain produces an internal representation of the world. The activation of this internal representation is assumed to give rise to the experience of seeing. The problem with this kind of approach is that it leaves unexplained how the existence of such a detailed internal representation might produce visual consciousness. An alternative proposal is made here. We propose that seeing is a way of acting. It is a particular way of exploring the environment. Activity in internal representations does not generate the experience of seeing. The outside world serves as its own, external, representation. The experience of seeing occurs when the organism masters what we call the governing laws of sensorimotor contingency. The advantage of this approach is that it provides a natural and principled way of accounting for visual consciousness, and for the differences in the perceived quality of sensory experience in the different sensory modalities. Several lines of empirical evidence are brought forward in support of the theory, in particular: evidence from experiments in sensorimotor adaptation, visual \"filling in,\" visual stability despite eye movements, change blindness, sensory substitution, and color perception.

A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness-Authors' Response-Acting out our sensory experience

In spite of the remarkable progress made in the burgeoning field of social neuroscience, the neural mechanisms that underlie social encounters are only beginning to be studied and could-paradoxically-be seen as representing the "dark matter" of social neuroscience. Recent conceptual and empirical developments consistently indicate the need for investigations that allow the study of real-time social encounters in a truly interactive manner. This suggestion is based on the premise that social cognition is fundamentally different when we are in interaction with others rather than merely observing them. In this article, we outline the theoretical conception of a second-person approach to other minds and review evidence from neuroimaging, psychophysiological studies, and related fields to argue for the development of a second-person neuroscience, which will help neuroscience to really "go social"; this may also be relevant for our understanding of psychiatric disorders construed as disorders of social cognition.

/pdf/toward-a-second-person-neuroscience-3cc8z1fj3t.pdf

Toward a second-person neuroscience.

The capacity for voluntary action is seen as essential to human nature. Yet neuroscience and behaviourist psychology have traditionally dismissed the topic as unscientific, perhaps because the mechanisms that cause actions have long been unclear. However, new research has identified networks of brain areas, including the pre-supplementary motor area, the anterior prefrontal cortex and the parietal cortex, that underlie voluntary action. These areas generate information for forthcoming actions, and also cause the distinctive conscious experience of intending to act and then controlling one's own actions. Volition consists of a series of decisions regarding whether to act, what action to perform and when to perform it. Neuroscientific accounts of voluntary action may inform debates about the nature of individual responsibility.

http://www.summer12.isc.uqam.ca/page/docs/readings/Haggard-Patrick/Human%20Volition%20Towards%20a%20neuroscience%20of%20will.pdf

Human volition: towards a neuroscience of will

False-belief understanding in infants

What determines what we see? In contrast to the traditional "modular" understanding of perception, according to which visual processing is encapsulated from higher-level cognition, a tidal wave of recent research alleges that states such as beliefs, desires, emotions, motivations, intentions, and linguistic representations exert direct top-down influences on what we see. There is a growing consensus that such effects are ubiquitous, and that the distinction between perception and cognition may itself be unsustainable. We argue otherwise: none of these hundreds of studies - either individually or collectively - provide compelling evidence for true top-down effects on perception, or "cognitive penetrability". In particular, and despite their variety, we suggest that these studies all fall prey to only a handful of pitfalls. And whereas abstract theoretical challenges have failed to resolve this debate in the past, our presentation of these pitfalls is empirically anchored: in each case, we show not only how certain studies could be susceptible to the pitfall (in principle), but how several alleged top-down effects actually are explained by the pitfall (in practice). Moreover, these pitfalls are perfectly general, with each applying to dozens of other top-down effects. We conclude by extracting the lessons provided by these pitfalls into a checklist that future work could use to convincingly demonstrate top-down effects on visual perception. The discovery of substantive top-down effects of cognition on perception would revolutionize our understanding of how the mind is organized; but without addressing these pitfalls, no such empirical report will license such exciting conclusions. Language: en

/pdf/cognition-does-not-affect-perception-evaluating-the-evidence-2kbftivku4.pdf

Cognition does not affect perception: Evaluating the evidence for "top-down" effects.

is well-known that eye movements are central to visual perception [1]. Visual acuity decreases dramatically in the periphery of vision, and precise eye movements to specific locations are vital to foveate objects of interest and identify them with high accuracy [1–4]. Given the importance of eye movements for visual perception, there has been a surge of interest in the topic, with numerous studies being conducted to clarify the variables that determine our eye movements (for a historical review see [5]).

In fact, Google Scholar shows that eye movements are discussed in over a million publications, and a Web of Science search reveals 17,000 publications with eye movement in the title or abstract. As shown in Figure 1, the number of publications with eye movement in the title or abstract has also steadily increased over years, culminating in about 200 papers published in 2013.



Figure 1

The number of publications with the “eye movement” in the title or abstract, according to a Web of Science search 2014.



Despite the surge of interest in eye movements, many questions remain unresolved. This is also reflected in this special issue on eye movement control. First, there are a variety of different eye movements [2, 4]. Among the most widely known eye movements are the fast, ballistic saccades (including superfast express saccades) (e.g., B. de Gelder et al., this issue), smooth-pursuit eye movements (J. N. van der Geest et al., this issue), and vergence eye movements (e.g., P. M. Grove et al., this issue) required to fixate objects at different depths. Less well-known and yet intensely researched are microsaccades, tremor, slow drift, and vestibuloocular and optokinetic eye movements that stabilize gaze during motions of the head and motions of large regions of the image on the retina [2, 4].

Secondly and more importantly for the current special issue, eye movements are also controlled by a variety of different factors [1, 4]. Apart from being subject to diverse muscular and ocular constraints, successful voluntary control over eye movements critically depends on the quality of the visual input, which in turn depends on a variety of internal and external factors [1, 6, 7]. The contributions to the present special issue clarify key elements of both internal and external factors in eye movement control (G. W. Alpers et al., U. Ansorge et al., B. de Gelder et al., P. M. Grove et al., D. R. Hardwick et al., W. E. Huddlestone et al., J. Kassubek et al., A. Khan et al., A. Piras et al., N. D. Smith et al., J. N. van der Geest et al., and D. Venini et al., this issue).

In the present contributions, eye movements have also been used to provide new insights into ocular and neurological disorders (J. Kassubek et al., N. D. Smith et al., this issue) and shed new light on the relationship between covert attention and eye movements (e.g., G. W. Alpers et al., U. Ansorge et al., D. R. Hardwick et al., and A. Khan et al., this issue; see also [6–9]). Together, the papers in this special issue provide a timely update on eye movement control that reflects current hot topics in the field, spanning the range from cognitive science over applied psychology to clinical psychology and neuroscience.


Stefanie I. Becker

Gernot Horstmann

Arvid Herwig

Eye Movement Control

Human actions may be driven endogenously (to produce desired environmental effects) or exogenously (to accommodate to environmental demands). There is a large body of evidence indicating that these two kinds of action are controlled by different neural substrates. However, only little is known about what happens--in functional terms--on these different "routes to action". Ideomotor approaches claim that actions are selected with respect to their perceptual consequences. We report experiments that support the validity of the ideomotor principle and that, at the same time, show that it is subject to a far-reaching constraint: It holds for endogenously driven actions only! Our results suggest that the activity of the two "routes to action" is based on different types of learning: The activity of the system guiding stimulus-based actions is accompanied by stimulus-response (sensorimotor) learning, whereas the activity of the system controlling intention-based actions results in action-effect (ideomotor) learning.

/pdf/two-modes-of-sensorimotor-integration-in-intention-based-and-2u5k5p9mz7.pdf

Two modes of sensorimotor integration in intention-based and stimulus-based actions

An overview of today's diverse theoretical and methodological approaches to action and the relationship of action and cognition. The emerging field of action science is characterized by a diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches that share the basic functional belief that evolution has optimized cognitive systems to serve the demands of action. This book brings together the constitutive approaches of action science in a single source, covering the relation of action to such cognitive functions as perception, attention, memory, and volition. Each chapter offers a tutorial-like description of a major line of inquiry, written by a leading scientist in the field. Taken together, the chapters reflect a dynamic and rapidly growing field and provide a forum for comparison and possible integration of approaches. After discussing core questions about how actions are controlled and learned, the book considers ecological approaches to action science; neurocogntive approaches to action understanding and attention; developmental approaches to action science; social actions, including imitation and joint action; and the relationships between action and the conceptual system (grounded cognition) and between volition and action. An emerging discipline depends on a rich and multifaceted supply of theoretical and methodological approaches. The diversity of perspectives offered in this book will serve as a guide for future explorations in action science. Contributors Lawrence W. Barsalou, Miriam Beisert, Valerian Chambon, Thomas Goschke, Patrick Haggard, Arvid Herwig, Herbert Heuer, Cecilia Heyes, Bernhard Hommel, Glyn W. Humphreys, Richard B. Ivry, Markus Kiefer, Gunther Knoblich, Sally A. Linkenauger, Janeen D. Loehr, Peter J. Marshall, Andrew N. Meltzoff, Wolfgang Prinz, Dennis R. Proffitt, Giacomo Rizzolatti, David A. Rosenbaum, Natalie Sebanz, Corrado Sinigaglia, Sandra Sulzenbruck, Jordan A. Taylor, Michael T. Turvey, Claes von Hofsten, Rebecca A. Williamson

Action science: Foundations of an emerging discipline

The self in action effects: Selective attenuation of self-generated sounds

Human actions may be carried out in response to exogenous stimuli (stimulus based) or they may be selected endogenously on the basis of the agent's intentions (intention based). We studied the functional differences between these two types of action during action–effect (ideomotor) learning. Participants underwent an acquisition phase, in which each key-press (left/right) triggered a specific tone (low pitch/high pitch) either in a stimulus-based or in an intention-based action mode. Consistent with previous findings, we demonstrate that auditory action effects gain the ability to prime their associated responses in a later test phase only if the actions were selected endogenously during acquisition phase. Furthermore, we show that this difference in ideomotor learning is not due to different attentional demands for stimulus-based and intention-based actions. Our results suggest that ideomotor learning depends on whether or not the action is selected in the intention-based action mode, whereas the amount ...

Arvid Herwig

Papers

Eye Movement Control

Two modes of sensorimotor integration in intention-based and stimulus-based actions

Action science: Foundations of an emerging discipline

The self in action effects: Selective attenuation of self-generated sounds

Intention and attention in ideomotor learning