The latest volume in this prestigious series is dedicated to exploring how much of higher cognitive function can be explained by reduction to simpler sensorimotor processes. It uses a series of specific cognitive domains to examine the sensorimotor bases of human cognition. The first section deals with the common neural processes for primary and 'cognitive' processes. It examines the key neural systems and computational architectures at the interface between cognition, sensation and action. The second section deals with specific themes in abstract cognition: the origins of action, and the conceptual aspects of sensory, particularly somatosensory processing. It looks at how mental and neural processes of abstraction are vital to the cognitive-sensorimotor interface. It also covers topics such as tool-use, bodily awareness and executive organisation of action patterns, and probes the extent to which principles of sensorimotor information-processing extend to further hierarchical representations. The next section deals with the representation of the self and others. The questions of self-consciousness and of attribution to other minds have a fundamental place, and a long history in psychology. At first sight, few aspects of cognition could seem more abstract, more refined than these. However, recent research suggests that sensorimotor systems are good 'social levellers': your sensory and motor apparatus is much like mine. Can people vicariously experience the sensory and motor events of other individuals? What aspects of social representation are explained by sensorimotor sharing, and what are not? The chapters in this section offer strongly contrasting perspectives. The final section deals with upper limits of cognition: the most abstract and conceptual levels of thought, including action syntax, language, and consciousness. These chapters investigate which aspects, if any, of such concepts as time, space, identity and number may be linked to representations of basic sensory and motor events. Taken as a whole, the chapters in the book provide a compelling overview and re-examination of the sensorimotor foundations of human cognition.

Table of Contents:
SECTION 1: SENSORIMOTOR TOOLBOXES ; 1. On the agnosticism of spikes: salience, saccades, and attention in the lateral intraparietal area of the monkey ; 2. Modulations of prefrontal activity related to cognitive control and performance monitoring ; 3. Perceptual deficits in optic ataxia ; 4. Reversal of subjective temporal order due to sensory and motor integrations ; SECTION 2: ABSTRACTION FROM SENSORIMOTOR FOUNDATIONS ; 5. How motor-related is cognitive control? ; 6. The anterior cingulate cortex: reward-guided action selection and the value of actions ; 7. How anticipation recruits our motor system: the habitual pragmatic body map revisited ; 8. Motor awareness and motor intention in anosognosia for hemiplegia ; 9. Investigating multisensory spatial cognition through the phenomenon of sensory extinction ; 10. Bottom-up visuo-manual adaptation: consequences for spatial cognition ; SECTION 3: SELF AND OTHER ; 11. From my self to other selves: a revised framework for the self/other differentiation ; 12. Neural basis of social interactions in primates ; 13. Bodily bonds: effects of social context on ideomotor movements ; 14. Neuroimaging the self? ; 15. An attempt towards an integrative comparison of psychoanalytical and sensorimotor control theories of action ; 16. Predictive attenuation in the perception of touch ; 17. The self and its body: functional and neural signatures of body-ownership ; 18. The motor hierarchy: from kinematics to goals and intentions ; 19. From hand actions to speech: evidence and speculations ; 20. Action mirroring and action understanding: an alternative account ; 21. Mirroring, association and the correspondence problem ; SECTION 4: CONCEPTUAL AND SYMBOLIC THOUGHT ; 22. The cognitive architecture of the human lateral prefrontal cortex ; 23. Automatic and strategic effects in human imitation ; 24. Symbols and quantities in parietal cortex: elements of a mathematical theory ; 25. Using conceptual knowledge in action and language ; 26. On the origins of intentions ; 27. "What was I thinking?" Developmental and neural connections between theory of mind, memory and the self