The Neural Correlates of Action Representation in the Real World

Abstract

This thesis is about action representations and their neural correlates. Action representations serve as internal models of our behaviour, constructed through dynamic interaction between body and environment, shaped by knowledge and experience. We rely on action representations in order to act in an everchanging environment. Considering that much of our real world behaviour involves dynamic movements with degrees of freedom that are not tolerated by traditional brain imaging techniques, we have long been constrained in examining how actions are represented in the brain. In this thesis, limitations of traditional brain imagining techniques are overcome by employing a novel mobile EEG approach, which allows the identification of the neural markers of the action representations underlying real world locomotor behaviour.