Stephen:Is a body map a sort of abstract model of the world, representing the body's situation? Or alternatively might it be more like what Brooks describes - stimulus directly begets action, with no abstraction required?
You're talking about one of the hottest areas of discussion currently. Essentially you're asking about "image schemas". My personal idea is they're at their most concrete, literally loose, plastic map outlines of your body and other objects, and the spaces in which they can move (as distinct from more detailed, sub-photographic images). But they are ultimately, extremely flexible and can be extremely abstracted. In the final analysis, any shape whatosever can be condensed to a simple line, for example, as in a stick man - or as in the foundations of number, where simple notches on a stick, or balls on an abacus, can represent literally any-shaped objects whatsoever. I feel confident the brain has this plasticity of representation, and that it is essential to visual object perception. For a discussion of all current ideas on this subject see: Beate Hampe (ed.), From Perception to Meaning-Image Schemas in Cognitive Linguistics, Mouton de Gruyter, 2005 (& if you find a cheap copy let me know! - it's expensive). There's an intro on the net somewhere. Also I recommend Image Schemata in the Brain, essay Tim Rohrer (from above book) - available on net - Here's the exciting intro, which should give a feel why I think no one should be doing NLP without familiarising themselves with the work going on here:. "1.1 Dynamic patterns: image schemata as shared activation contours across perceptual modalities Let me begin with a bold and preposterous claim. I want to hand you an idea that at first may seem hard to grasp, but if you turn it over and over again in your head until you finally get a firm handle on it, it will feel completely right to you. Now, if I could make a movie of what your brain was doing as you read that last sentence, it would most likely look very similar to a brain movie of you turning an unfamiliar object over and over again in your hand until you found a way to grip it well. Your primary motor and somatosensory cortices would be active in the areas mapping the hand and the wrist, and the premotor and secondary somatosensory hand cortices would also be active. Until recently, these suggestions would have seemed to be more the stuff of idle speculation and science fiction than of scientific fact. However, over the past few years we have been able to paint just that kind of picture, given recent advances in brain imaging technology coupled with research findings by, e.g., Hauk et al. (2004); Coslett et al. (2002); Moore et al. (2000); Rizzolatti et al. (2002; 2001) and Rohrer (2001b). There have been substantial obstacles on the way, not the least of which was a longstanding misbelief that the language functions occur exclusively in areas of the inferior frontal lobe and superior temporal lobe-primarily in Broca's and Wernicke's areas.1 However, a new picture of a distributed model of semantic comprehension is now emerging. In the new model, brain areas formerly thought to be purely sensorimotoric are turning out to have important roles in the socalled 'higher' cognitive processes, e.g., language. In other words, language makes much more use of the brain's processes of spatial, visual and mental imagery than previously thought." ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=92326353-4505f0
