Well into the twenty-first century, research on embodied cognition remains as prolific as ever. Multiple theoretical efforts, often emphasizing the role of the mirror neuron system but increasingly extending beyond such mechanisms, have informed our current understanding of key facets of human experience, including language, memory, learning, social cognition, and interoception. The organization and functions of our body, as well as the ways in which we traverse the world with it, shape how we think, communicate, and interpret signals around and inside us. With a wealth of knowledge, however, come novel questions. How do these theories accommodate disparate, ever-growing empirical corpora? How have they changed as a result of recent findings? What are their latest implications for educational, clinical, and otherwise translational settings? What are their main limitations, caveats, and contradictions? Or, more generally, what can we make of theories of embodiment and the role of the human mirror neuron system? The latter question, which was the title of the first edition of the present Research Topic nearly ten years ago, remains equally relevant today.
Theories of embodiment and/or the mirror neuron system are now fueled by a plethora of behavioral, neuroanatomical, hemodynamic, electrophysiological, and neuromodulatory methods, together with peripheral measurement techniques, virtual reality technologies, and diverse (invasive and non-invasive) approaches to capture cognition in the wild. These tools are being variously applied to healthy and clinical populations, yielding an abundance of data that are analyzed not only with classical statistical methods but also with cutting-edge machine learning algorithms. However, the field faces a double-edged sword, as all these breakthroughs invigorate theoretical thinking as much as they problematize it.
In the second edition of this Research Topic, we invite colleagues to submit their work investigating embodiment and its possible applications in order to highlight the incredible progress we have witnessed in this line of inquiry over the last several years. We are particularly interested in original work with healthy and patient populations, using imaging, neuromodulatory, translational and behavioral techniques, as well as innovative experimental and statistical tools. Submissions may include original research articles, reviews, case reports, or opinion pieces. The goal is to assess the current status of the field and pave the way for future work that will both answer and expand our enduring, overarching question.
Well into the twenty-first century, research on embodied cognition remains as prolific as ever. Multiple theoretical efforts, often emphasizing the role of the mirror neuron system but increasingly extending beyond such mechanisms, have informed our current understanding of key facets of human experience, including language, memory, learning, social cognition, and interoception. The organization and functions of our body, as well as the ways in which we traverse the world with it, shape how we think, communicate, and interpret signals around and inside us. With a wealth of knowledge, however, come novel questions. How do these theories accommodate disparate, ever-growing empirical corpora? How have they changed as a result of recent findings? What are their latest implications for educational, clinical, and otherwise translational settings? What are their main limitations, caveats, and contradictions? Or, more generally, what can we make of theories of embodiment and the role of the human mirror neuron system? The latter question, which was the title of the first edition of the present Research Topic nearly ten years ago, remains equally relevant today.
Theories of embodiment and/or the mirror neuron system are now fueled by a plethora of behavioral, neuroanatomical, hemodynamic, electrophysiological, and neuromodulatory methods, together with peripheral measurement techniques, virtual reality technologies, and diverse (invasive and non-invasive) approaches to capture cognition in the wild. These tools are being variously applied to healthy and clinical populations, yielding an abundance of data that are analyzed not only with classical statistical methods but also with cutting-edge machine learning algorithms. However, the field faces a double-edged sword, as all these breakthroughs invigorate theoretical thinking as much as they problematize it.
In the second edition of this Research Topic, we invite colleagues to submit their work investigating embodiment and its possible applications in order to highlight the incredible progress we have witnessed in this line of inquiry over the last several years. We are particularly interested in original work with healthy and patient populations, using imaging, neuromodulatory, translational and behavioral techniques, as well as innovative experimental and statistical tools. Submissions may include original research articles, reviews, case reports, or opinion pieces. The goal is to assess the current status of the field and pave the way for future work that will both answer and expand our enduring, overarching question.
