A motor-centred approach to the study of cognition

Goal-directed behaviours rely critically on internal representations of the surrounding space. We investigate the transformation of neural spatial representations into actions, and how such representations emerge from sensorimotor experience. Conceptually, our work embraces Henri Poincaré’s motor-centric idea of a spatial representation: “localising an object means representing to ourselves the movements that must take place to reach that object”. Therefore, we start from the motor end of the problem with the study of overt spatially-targeted actions, and progressively move upstream to reveal the covert neural processes governing action selection.