Editorial: The Embodied Brain: Computational Mechanisms of Integrated Sensorimotor Interactions With a Dynamic Environment

Mario Senden, Judith C. Peters, Florian Röhrbein, Gustavo Deco, Rainer Goebel

Abstract: The paradigm shift towards an action-oriented view (Engel, Maye, Kurthen, & König, 2013) stresses that cognition permits meaningful interactions with a dynamic environment and cannot be reduced to thinking-related mental representations. Consequently, the emerging field of embodied neuroscience has been inspired by recent achievements in robotics. At the same time, the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence increasingly turn to neuroscience to utilize insights on the neural underpinnings of sensorimotor interactions and embodied cognition.As contribution to this integration of computational neuroscience, artificial intelligence, robotics and neurobiology, this Research Topic provides an overview of recent advances in sensorimotor integration and embodied cognition from a multidisciplinary perspective. A total of nine contributions present important scientific insights into embodied sensorimotor systems while another four contributions present comprehensive frameworks and toolchains that support the interdisciplinary study of embodied agents.Embodied agents need to be able to autonomously and adaptively interact with their environment. Grossberg (2019) presents a large-scale visuomotor architecture: the Self-Organizing, Vision, Expectation, Recognition, Emotion, Intelligent, Goal-oriented Navigation model (SOVEREIGN; Gnadt & Grossberg, 2008). This architecture consists of several sensory, motor and memory components and is able to perform motor sequences under diffe...