Embodied Computation: How Does Embodiment Impact Sensorimotor and Cognitive Processing?

Animals act on the world through a physical body and continually adjust behavior in response to the sensory feedback their actions produce. This closed loop between brain, body, and environment is central to motor control, but its role in other neural computations remains less clear. This review focuses on embodied computation: how the physical body shapes neural activity and behavior across functions ranging from motor control to cognitive processes. We examine the impact of embodiment in several domains, including compositional reuse, intrinsic motivation, metabolic costs, and connectome-constrained computation, with the broader aim of asking when the body can be abstracted away and when it is essential for explaining what the brain computes.