Perception Is Movement, Movement Is Perception

In this paper, the function of receptive and processing neurons is distinguished from that of neuronal circuits. The former, which are inside the circuits, collect and elaborate sensorial information to build “objects” which are spatially and temporally well-structured and vary in intensity. These objects are the modal components of sensory systems: hot/cold, smooth/rough, green, table, sound, etc. motionless or in motion. On the other hand, perceptual and motor neuronal circuits have the function of positioning the “objects” in space and time in an orderly way. This process of positioning, being regularly repeated in space and/or time, determines groupings and fillings which give rise to “blocks”, that is, significant constructs of objects grouped in space and/or time and then stored. These blocks are divided into maps, stored in the posterior areas of the cerebral cortex, and dynamisms, stored in the anterior areas of the cerebral cortex. One of the functions of dynamisms is selection. Positioning is fulfilled through four distinct processes: anticipation, programming, execution and verification. Maps are divided into anticipation (or modal) maps and programming (or spatio-temporal) maps. Damage to modal maps generates impairments in the identification of stimuli, associative agnosia, ideational apraxia, Wernicke’s aphasia; damage to spatiotemporal maps generates impairments in the perception of stimuli, apperceptive agnosia, ideomotor apraxia and parietal disorders related to language. Anticipation consists of two functions: 1) the unconscious pre-activation of stored data generated by conscious perception; 2) the selection of one of the pre-activated data. Pre-activation pertains to “maps” and “objects”. Selection can be performed on maps (movement and perception) or objects (mental representation). The memory of a circuit where maps are selected is called “procedural memory”. After the initial positioning, the same process (metapositioning) can be repeated. This allows linguistic correlations, spatial and temporal relations, and classifications to be made.