Embodied cognition

In this conference paper, Peter König et al. discuss embodied cognition in the human brain from perspectives of spatial cognition, sensorimotor processing, face processing, and mobile EEG
recordings. The argument is based upon experimental evidence gathered from five separate studies.
Study 1) demonstrates that spatial orientation of houses is primarily learned in an action-oriented way.
In study 2) it is shown that cortical representations of facial viewpoints traverse a distinct sequence, expressing different encoding schemes at different latencies. Study 3) is a benchmark test of mobile EEG systems. Study 4) uses Independent Component Analysis of EEG data showing that in cognitive tasks some independent components systematically relate to sensory processing as well as to action execution. The ongoing Study 5) is a real-world application investigating face processing during natural visual exploration in a fully mobile setup.
The findings support the assumption that cognitive processes are rooted in the body's interactions with the world. Thus to understand cognitive processes it is needed to consider the (inter)actions in the natural environment.