Perception from Action

Abstract

The outside-in framework inevitably poses the question: What comes between perception and action? The homunculus with its decision-making power produces unavoidable logical consequences from the separation of perception from action. I promote the alternative view that things and events in the world can acquire meaning only through brain-initiated actions. In this process, the brain builds a simplified, customized model of the world by encoding the relationships of events to each other. I introduce the concept of “corollary discharge,” the main physiological mechanism that grounds the sensory input to make it an experience. This is a comparator mechanism that allows the brain to examine the relationship between a true change in the sensory input and a change due to self-initiated movement of the sensors.