Co-Action 

Welcome

The course of our actions is constantly influenced by the way we perceive the world around us. On the other hand, having prior knowledge about how to perform an action provides us with useful information to anticipate its consequences and make sense of the actions performed by others. Several studies support the view that the motor system may actually bias the processing of perceptual information, aid the visual recognition of others’ actions, and thereby contribute to timely adjustments of our decisions. While growing evidence suggests that human behaviour is subject to a permanent crosstalk between cognitive and motor processes, the nature of this crosstalk and the operating mode remain to be elucidated. For instance, studies of brain-lesioned patients have contributed to show that these processes can work independently of each other so that motor deficits do not necessarily entail cognitive deficits. While this finding put constraints on the conceptualization of the interplay between cognition and motor control, little consideration has been given to the investigation of conditions where cognitive and motor processes cannot work in isolation due to limited resoures or mutual dependency. The goal of this five-year Collective Research Initiative (ARC, 2021-2026) is to propose an integrated approach of human behaviour that captures the inter-dependency of cognitive and motor processes, as it normally occurs in everyday life, in both healthy and clinical populations, thereby also offering a new framework to understand the mechanisms underlying cognitive and motor comorbidities. The present project is led by four researchers, from different disciplines, who have joined their methodological expertise to study the computational, functional and neural principles of the interplay between cognition and motor control. The project is split into four work packages (WP) examining four elementary functions of human behaviour:

WP1. Visual cognition: How does saccadic motor control constrain what we visually perceive?

WP2. Action recognition: How does the motor system help us to recognize the actions of others?

WP3. Decision making: How does the motor system help us to make accurate decisions in due time?

WP4. Motor execution: How does the motor system adapt to a dynamically changing environment?

Congrats to Thomas Carsten for his new publication in Scientific Reports!