Motor representations and the perception of space: perceptual judgments of the boundary of action space
Résumé
This chapter first presents the current knowledge about how the perceptual space is organized in relation to body and action representations. It then discusses a neuro-cognitive model that accounts for the dynamical properties of spatial perception, which is thought to rely on the brain's capacity to anticipate the sensory and spatial consequences of deployable actions. It presents recent data that show how the manipulation of motor representations and more specifically the predicted outcome of motor action can perturb the subjects' capacity to delimitate functional spaces significantly. It also reports a study demonstrating that transient inhibition of the motor brain area using transcranial magnetic stimulation interferes with the perceptual judgments of what is reachable. Finally, the chapter considers the case of mental pathology. It presents data that reveal problems of delimitating peripersonal space in a group of patients with schizophrenia, which suggests poor ability in using motor representations.