The orchestration of the sensory-motor systems: Clues from Neuropsychology

Research over the last several decades has led to clear and empirically tractable proposals about the representation of conceptual knowledge in the brain. Here we argue that there are already sufficient data from neuropsychology to strongly constrain extant hypotheses about the representation of conceptual knowledge. One constraint imposed by these neuropsychological data is that recognition of actions and understanding of objects do not necessarily depend on the ability to produce object-associated actions. This conclusion compels a reconsideration of the role played by motor planning and/or execution processes in action and object recognition and understanding.