April 11 –Rick Grush: The role of embodiment in the representation of space, time and objects

The most common application of ideas of embodiment to the representation of space and time have to do with ways in which the conceptualization of space and time is structured by concept derived from embodiment. For example, conceptualizations of time as based on a conceptualization of an observer with a front and back, a direction of movement, and objects with fronts and backs. However the body and bodily behavior play some more subtle structuring roles in the representation of space and time as well. In this talk I will describe a fairly complicated information processing framework that attempts to describe how the brain can represent space, time and objects in a unified way. This framework involves the filtering, smoothing and predicting (i.e. trajectory estimation) of basis function encodings of sensory and postural signals involved in sensory episodes. These sets of basis function values are suited to 'decoding' by sets of coefficients specific to various behavior types. That is, the way in which space, time and objects are represented is tied very closely to the possibility of behavior. After describing the framework and showing how, in general terms, these kinds of representation are tied to bodily behavior, I will point out a specific example concerning the way that the body determines a fundamental feature of our perceptual experience of time.