Motor Cognition

Marc Jeannerod, born in Lyon, France. Doctor in Medicine (1965), Thesis in Lyon, on sleep mechanisms. Post-doc at the Brain Research Institute, UCLA, Los Angeles (California). Professor in Physiology at the University Claude Bernard, Lyon. Runs his own lab on sensory-motor coordination, until 1997. 1997-2005: Founder and Director of the Institut des Sciences Cognitives, Lyon. In this Institute, works on the mechanisms of the generation of actionsMember, Académie des Sciences.

This book is a tour de force covering encompassing neuropsychology, neurophysiology, philosophy, neuoimaging, comparative neurobiology and clinical studies to support a thought provoking perspective on motor functioning. I would recommend this book to those interested in the study of neural production of movements ...

• 1. Representations for actions ; 1.1 Definitions ; 1.2 Neural models of action representations ; 1.3 Functional models of action representation ; 2. Imagined actions as a prototypical form of action representation ; 2.1 The kinematic content of motor images ; 2.2 Dynamic changes in physiological parameters during motor imagery ; 2.3 The functional anatomy of motor images ; 2.4 The consequences of the embodiment of action representations ; 3. Consciousness of self-produced actions and intentions ; 3.1 Consciousness of actions ; 3.2 Consciousness of intentions ; 4. The sense of agency and the self/other distinction ; 4.1 Sense of ownership and sense of agency in self-identification ; 4.2 The nature of the mechanism for self-identification ; 4.3 The problem of the self/other distinction ; 4.4 Failure of self-recognition/attribution mechanisms in pathological states ; 5. How do we perceive and understand the actions of others ; 5.1 The perception of faces and bodies ; 5.2 The perception of biological motion ; 5.3 The understanding of others' actions ; 5.4 Functional implications of the mirror system in motor cognition ; 5.5 The role of the mirror system in action imitation ; 6. The simulation hypothesis of motor cognition ; 6.1 Motor simulation: a hypothesis for explaining action representations ; 6.2 Motor cognition and social cognition ; 6.3 Motor simulation and language understanding ; Conclusion