The emulation theory of representation: Motor control, imagery, and perception

“The Cerebellar CorticoNuclear MicroComplex (CNMC) (Ito, 1984), i.e., the CB adaptive unit that learns based on error signals, becomes an internal model, an " emulator " (Grush, 2004), with signal-transfer characteristics identical to those of the copied cortical system (figure 1).”

“Accordingly, as long as they occur in an unpredictable fashion, rare breaches of expectancy should not cause sustained changes of what has been referred to as our internal models [Grush, 2004; Miall and Wolpert, 1996; Schubotz, 2007; Wolpert and Kawato, 1998].”

“Indeed, such an account would even justify a (very different) version of Peacocke’s Principal Hypothesis, since it holds that one and the same mechanism (namely, the mindreading system, with access to perceptual and imagistic input) underlies awareness of both our physical actions and mental events of judging, decidin…”

“…neurosciences (de’Sperati & Stucchi, 1997, 2000; Tucker & Ellis, 1998; Gallese, 2000; Ellis & Tucker, 2000; Tucker & Ellis, 2001, 2004; Hesslow, 2002; Grush, 2003, 2004, 2007; Garbarini & Adenzato, 2004; Tipper et al., 2006; Cisek, 2007; Coello & Delevoye-Turrell, 2007; Witt & Proffitt, 2008;…”

“Such a ‘pseudo-closed-loop control system’ receives feedback, not from the target system, but from the output of the emulator [ 18 ] – see Fig. 6.2.”

“Recent studies [29, 33, 40, 56] collectively show that the presence of low level representations and simulation mechanisms strongly coupled with perception and motor control, is the foundation for building higher level processes and representations.”

“The emulation theory of representation (Grush 2004) is, in essence, an attempt to create a unified account of psychology .”

“221 ) de l’action à venir, ce qui permet de minimiser les délais de correction lorsqu’une perturbation survient durant l’exécution du mouvement (voir par exemple Edelman, 1992 ; Grush, 2004 ; Berthoz, 2008).”

“More recently, these models have been used to model perception and imagery as well (Wolpert et al., 2003; Grush, 2004).”

“Others, such as Rick Grush (2004) have tried to show how control theory, a dynamical approach, employs neural representations in accounting for motor control, and to extend this approach to other cognitive processes.”

“The emulation theory of representation (Grush 2004) gives us a handle on these kinds of tasks in terms of information processing, independently of the mechanisms by which it is implemented.”

“As many have argued, this capacity for offline simulation seems to pave an attractive path from online sensorimotor control to more sophisticated cognitive capacities (Clark 2016; Colder 2011; Grush 2004).”

“It has been suggested that the cerebellum takes part in the modulation of internal representation of motor movement by forward model implemented in the region (Grush 2004).”

“Studieshaveshownthattheposteriorparietalcortexwill integrate multimodal sensory information with motor planning information [10] and be used to judge body posture and rehearse movements [11], [12], [13].”

“In particular, emulation theory (Grush, 2004) proposes MI and the forward model to play functionally similar roles – predicting action consequences (see Kilteni et al., 2018 for supporting evidence) in the absence of processing sensory reafference (Jessey et al., 2023).”

“In this vein, it has been suggested that control-theoretic models of individual motor control can be extended to explain complex phenomena in social cognition [18,19].”

“For - ward models also termed ‘predictors’ [184] or ‘emulators’ [185].”

“Its original function is to permit the organism to adjust and improve the efficiency of its own ongoing behavior, be emulating the stored activation pattern that fits best (Grush 2004).”

“For example, it is a crucial feature in the emulator theory of Grush (2004).”

“Regarding cognitive science, our discussion speaks to the current debates on how socalled higher-level cognition sits with dynamic, interactive, and sensorimotor aspects (Bickhard and Terveen 1995; Clark 1997, 2008; Eliasmith 2012; Grush 2004; Kirsh 1991; Ramsey 2007; Smith 2010; Wheeler 2005).”

“Interestingly, when a person uses this capacity to simulate the somatomotor states of another individual, he/she must detach, at least partially, from his/her own current sensory states (Grush 2004).”

“As argued in [ 4 ,17], we believe that o-line, mental simulation is a suitable, embodied alternative to ‘reasoning by symbol-crunching’ of traditional AI systems, since it permits internal manipulation of (anticipatory) representations without losing grounding and situatedness.”

“According to Noë’s (2004) enactive approach, sensorimotor knowledge allows us to anticipate or predict the sensory changes resulting from performing an action.”

“In fact, it crucially depends on mechanisms permitting to emulate the external reality as claimed by [33], [34] (see our discussion in IV-A).”

“incoming perceptual events (Wolpert & Kawato, 1998; Grush, 2004).”

“CBP. In contrast to our exploratory work on choice blindness, the research on agency they present is carried by a strong theoretical framework developed within the field of computational motor control (e.g., Wolpert & Ghahramani, 2004, and taken to its limit as a general model of cognition by Grush, 2004 ).”

“There are also applications of Kalman Filters in cognitive modeling, such as the emulation theory of [7], where anticipatory mechanisms are used for action control and learning; what is new in [20] is their use for Schemas selection.”

“The findings we report here are in line with recent theoretical “predictive processing” proposals that liken imagery and predictive processes (Dijkstra et al., 2017, 2020; Grush, 2004; Moulton & Kosslyn, 2009).”

“…O’Shea and Moran, 2017) and different forms of a simulation theory of cognition (Decety and Ingvar, 1990; Jeannerod, 2001; Hesslow, 2002, 2012; Grush, 2004; Ptak et al., 2017); an essential part of this theory is that the simulation is performed by the same neural mechanisms as those…”

“…and prospective, they must have a mechanism to rehearse hypothetical scenarios through some process of internal simulation in order to predict, explain, and imagine events, and they must have a mechanism to use this outcome to modulate the behaviour of the system [16] [17] [18] [19] [20].”

“One of the earlier proposals in this direction is the theory of neural emulators (Grush, 2004), that bridges a close link between the engineering domain of con-”

“2002; Grush 2004; Sato 2009; Scott and Chiu 2021), but the key use, in terms of the theory explored here, is the ‘sensorytagging’ function: Forward-models provide a way to ‘tag’ self-produced sensations as such and so avoid the confusion between self-caused and other-caused sensations that would…”

“This credibly reflects that MI shares neural substrates with actual move - ment (Grush 2004; Gerardin et al. 2000; Sharma and Baron 2013 ).”

“…exist to explain the relationship between sensory timing and covert action (Balasubramaniam et al. 2021; Patel and Iversen 2014; Rauschecker 2011; Grush 2004; Wolpert et al. 2003; Schubotz 2007; Schubotz et al. 2000), with an emerging understanding that this action-perception relationship is an…”

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“Associated with this visuomotor mapping, a predictive system provides anticipatory information about action outcome (forward model, Wolpert & Kawato, 1998; Grush, 2004; Choudhury, Charman, Bird, & Blakemore, 2007).”

“In his reply, Grush (2004) said, 'I agree entirely with this suggestion, and in fact in Grush (2003) I discuss this briefly' (p. 430).”

“Also significant for the way they explore the connection between sensing and representation are the approaches of Gärdenfors (2000), Hesslow (2002) and Grush (2004) .”

“Some of the latest theories of action understanding invoke significant neurophysiological overlap between sensory and motor systems such that an observer’s own motor planning system is implicated in the interpretation of observed behaviour in others through a mechanism of emulation and synchronisation (Grush, 2004).”

“Action imagery is assumed to involve similar mechanisms to optimize and predict action consequences as they are used in action execution (Dahm, Weigelt, & Rieger, 2023; Grush, 2004; Jeannerod, 2001; Rieger et al., 2023).”

“At least some brain circuits seem to act as models of other, usually extra-neural, systems (Grush 2004).”

“For example, visual mental simulation is the result of predicted sensory feedback formulated by a forward model on the basis of motor inputs, which are in turn the consequence of the body representation (Grush, 2004; Schubotz, 2007).”

“The stimulus was a yellow square, that lasted (1) second, with a four-second (4) interval between the stimuli.”

“It is thought that similar mechanisms could lead to higher cognitive processes like imagery, anticipation and theory of mind [4, 5]”

“…and Stucchi (1997, 2000), but was chiefly systematized by Jeannerod (1994, 2001, 2006), Jeannerod et al. (1995), Gallese (2000), Hesslow (2002), Grush (2003, 2004, 2007), Garbarini and Adenzato (2004), Coello and Delevoye-Turrell (2007), Cisek (2007), Witt and Proffitt (2008), Pezzulo (2008),…”

“…from a motor plan itself because a bare motor plan is either a dynamic plan (a temporal sequence of motor commands or muscle tensions) or a kinematic plan (a plan for limb movement specified in terms of joint angles) that is different from proprioceptive/ kinesthetic feelings (Grush, 2004).”

“Our study is part of a more general initiative in cognitive science that aims to draw a naturalized, embodied view of cognition by tracing it back to sensorimotor learning and motor control, some of which maintaining a representational perspective [9,12], and some others not [26].”

“I take three of the most interesting forms of responses to the challenge to be those that posit a certain kind of structure for representations (Isaac 2013), those that tie the function of representation to serving as an internal model (Grush 2004), and those that, as discussed in Sect.”