According to sensorimotor theory perceiving is a bodily skill involving exercise of an implicit know-how of the systematic ways that sensations change as a result of potential movements, that is, of sensorimotor contingencies. The theory has been most successfully applied to vision and touch, while perceptual modalities that rely less on overt exploration of the environment have not received as much attention. In addition, most research has focused on philosophically grounding the theory and on psychologically elucidating sensorimotor laws, but the (...) theory’s ramifications for neuroscience still remain underexamined. Here we sketch the beginnings of a research program that could address these two outstanding challenges in terms of auditory perception. We review the neuroscience literature on passive listening, which is defined as listening without overt bodily movement, and conclude that sensorimotor theory provides a unique perspective on the consistent finding of motor system activation. In contrast to competing theories, this activation is predicted to be involved not only in the perception of speech- and action-related sounds, but in auditory perception in general. More specifically, we propose that the auditory processing associated with supplementary motor areas forms part of the neural basis of the exercise of sensorimotor know-how: these areas’ recognized role in facilitating spontaneous motor responses to sound and supporting flexible engagement of sensorimotor processes to guide auditory experience and enable auditory imagery, can be understood in terms of two key characteristics of sensorimotor interaction, its “alerting capacity” and “corporality”, respectively. We also highlight that there is more to the inside of the body than the brain: there is an opportunity to develop sensorimotor theory into new directions in terms of the still poorly understood active processes of the peripheral auditory system. (shrink)

Este artículo explora la gestualidad multisensorial, háptica y motriz como forma de habitar las atmósferas. Contribuye al desarrollo de epistemologías relacionales sobre la dimensión corporal, al abordar la experiencia corporeizada vivida con entornos aéreos, materiales, ecológicos y sociales, en lugar de centrarse en el significado conceptual y semántico para su explicación. El marco conceptual, se basa en la teoría de las affordances, las ciencias cognitivas enactivas y la fenomenología, que ofrecen una vía para configurar la interacción piel-atmósfera. Consideramos la unidad (...) organismo-entorno y lo que en la literatura se identifica con el concepto de atmósfera sonora. Se introduce la noción de affordances multisensoriales y hápticas como encuentro sensual y atencional de la presencia, para argumentar que tanto el enfoque contemporáneo del cuerpo háptico y gestual con posibilidades afectivas y de movimiento, como la perspectiva estética y ecológico-social de la performatividad -aunque conceptualmente útiles-, pasan por alto la existencia de una fenomenología háptica del reino sensual de las atmósferas. Así, se describe el entrelazamiento de las experiencias sensibles y estéticas con territorios sonoros habitados desde la experiencia táctil. Se discute cómo lo sonoro y la materialidad se utilizan para vivir experiencias particulares del espacio dentro de uno específico: la instalación arpa de fricción. Finalmente, con base en la distinción entre la sensibilidad y la consciencia, se orienta hacia una pedagogía de experiencias háptico-sonoras durante procesos de aprendizaje, útil en contextos de educación corporeizada, estética y crítica. Y se ofrece un lugar para imaginar y escenificar este tipo de entornos de aprendizaje de una manera deliberada, con cualidades permeables, inmersivas, afectivas y colectivas, para acompañar en la co-creación de mundos alternativos. (shrink)

Welcoming Hug’s critical analysis of educational and pedagogical applications of 4E cognition, I discuss the relevance of considering some enactive perspectives in dialogue with Freirean critical pedagogy in order to advance his proposal.

The aim of this paper is to provide a theoretical and formal framework to understand how the proprioceptive and kinesthetic system learns about body position and possibilities for movement in ongoing action and interaction. Whereas most weak embodiment accounts of proprioception focus on positionalist descriptions or on its role as a source of parameters for internal motor control, we argue that these aspects are insufficient to understand how proprioception is integrated into an active organized system in continuous and dynamic interaction (...) with the environment. Our strong embodiment thesis is that one of the main theoretical principles to understand proprioception, as a perceptual experience within concrete situations, is the coupling with kinesthesia and its relational constitution—self, ecological, and social. In our view, these aspects are underdeveloped in current accounts, and an enactive sensorimotor theory enriched with phenomenological descriptions may provide an alternative path toward explaining this skilled experience. Following O'Regan and Noë sensorimotor contingencies conceptualization, we introduce three distinct notions of proprioceptive kinesthetic-sensorimotor contingencies, which we describe conceptually and formally considering three varieties of perceptual experience in action: PK-SMCs-self, PK-SMCs-self-environment, and PK-SMC-self-other. As a proof of concept of our proposal, we developed a minimal PK model to discuss these elements in detail and show their explanatory value as important guides to understand the proprioceptive/kinesthetic system. Finally, we also highlight that there is an opportunity to develop enactive sensorimotor theory in new directions, creating a bridge between the varieties of experiences of oneself and learning skills. (shrink)

The main goal of this commentary is to provide an impetus toward the integration of some aspects of musical enactivism and ecological psychology into the framework of the semiotic eigencycle. I argue that the notions of embodied imagination and musical affordances at the level of interaction between agent and musical environment, play a robustly causal or perhaps even a constitutive role in the music cognitive semiotic process.