Through the forest of motor representations

Visual Feeling of Presence

“…Indeed, several portions of the ventro‐dorsal stream, which is the crucial cortical portion of the dorsal stream involved in the transformation of intrinsic object properties into action properties with the consequent translation of those properties in suitable motor acts, are activated during picture perception: F5 in the most rostral part of the ventral premotor cortex (Chao and Martin, ; see also Buccino et al ., ; Costantini et al ., ; Proverbio et al ., ; Grézes and Decety, ; for a review see Zipoli Caiani, ), parietal neurons in the dorsal stream and the anterior intraparietal area (AIP) (Romero et al ., ; Pani et al ., ). Therefore, the ventral premotor cortex, which is an end‐stage projection of the dorsal stream, is highly selective for manipulable objects observation with respect to non‐manipulable objects (Gerlach et al ., ; Kellenbach et al ., ) – for a complete philosophical argument based on these empirical results see (Ferretti, ; see also Ferretti, , sect. 5.6).…”

“…Lesions in the dorsal stream (the occipito‐parietal network from the primary visual cortex to the posterior parietal cortex) impair one's ability to use what one sees to guide action (optic ataxia), but not object recognition; lesions in the ventral stream (the occipito‐temporal network from the primary visual cortex to the infertemporal cortex) impair one's ability to recognize things in the visual world (visual agnosia), but not action guidance (Jacob and Jeannerod, ). Moreover, we have behavioral studies of normal subjects involving visual illusions that can deceive the ventral stream but not the dorsal one; thus, it seems that, contrarily to ventral perception, dorsal perception is impenetrable by consciousness (for a critical review see Brogaard, ; Ferretti, , sect. 5.5; Bruno and Battaglini, ; McIntosh and Schenk, ) – though, as I will suggest below, interaction between the streams is possible.…”

“…Now, we know that dorsal vision represents the depicted object and that only apparent, but not real egocentric representation, is possible with depicted objects (Ferretti, ). Real egocentric representation is possible only with real objects (in line with §§2.1, 2.3).…”

“…All this is a starting point to suggest an interstream interplay in order to obtain FOP: dorsal perception for the computation of motor action in an egocentric coordinates and ventral perception for high‐resolution volumetric reconstruction and response selection (for a review see Ferretti, , sect. 4.2, , sect. 5.6).…”

“…In accordance with all I said, we know that the conscious egocentric localization linked to the conscious perception of possibility of motor interaction – crucial for FOP – is due to interstream interaction, insofar as dorsal perception can access to sources of 3D and depth spatial information in the ventral stream (for a critical review see Briscoe, , sects. 6.1–6.4; Ferretti, , sect. 5) – for a complete overview about the neural processing concerning the interaction between the visual representations involved in stereoscopic perception and the motor representations allowing us to interact with the environment see (Chinellato and del Pobil, ; Theys et al ., ).…”