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Sentence Processing: Linking Language To Motor Chains, F Chersi, S Thill, T Ziemke, Am Borghi

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

A growing body of evidence in cognitive science and neuroscience points towards the existence of a deep interconnection between cognition, perception and action. According to this embodied perspective language is grounded in the sensorimotor system and language understanding is based on a mental simulation process (Jeannerod, 2007 ; Gallese, 2008 ; Barsalou, 2009 ). This means that during action words and sentence comprehension the same perception, action, and emotion mechanisms implied during interaction with objects are recruited. Among the neural underpinnings of this simulation process an important role is played by a sensorimotor matching system known as the mirror neuron …