Theories Of Embodied Cognition Research Articles

Embodied cognition: dimensions, domains and applications

This article is intended as a response to Goldinger et al. and to all those, an increasing minority in the sciences, who still belittle the contribution of embodied cognition to our understanding of human cognitive behaviour. In this article (section 1), I introduce the notion of embodiment and explain its dimensions and reach. I review (section 2) a range of embodied cognition theories and highlight the principles and criteria on which they rely or draw from. I focus (section 3) on three crucial empirical domains in which an embodied perspective has driven novel insights about the relationship between mind and cognition. I argue that embodiment is not just a philosophical mantra empty of empirical content. I draw attention (section 4) to some of the recent ways in which principles underlying embodied cognition have begun to be applied in different fields (contemporary psychology). I review some of these interventions and suggest that discussing these applications not only provides additional evidence against any poverty claim but can also help moving the field forward in important ways. Contra Goldinger et al., I therefore conclude (section 5) that embodied cognition is a very fruitful research programme for the empirical sciences and that can adequately explain many aspects of human cognitive behaviour.

Explicit and Implicit Responses of Seeing Own vs. Others' Emotions: An Electromyographic Study on the Neurophysiological and Cognitive Basis of the Self-Mirroring Technique.

Facial mimicry is described by embodied cognition theories as a human mirror system-based neural mechanism underpinning emotion recognition. This could play a critical role in the Self-Mirroring Technique (SMT), a method used in psychotherapy to foster patients’ emotion recognition by showing them a video of their own face recorded during an emotionally salient moment. However, dissociation in facial mimicry during the perception of own and others’ emotions has not been investigated so far. In the present study, we measured electromyographic (EMG) activity from three facial muscles, namely, the zygomaticus major (ZM), the corrugator supercilii (CS), and the levator labii superioris (LLS) while participants were presented with video clips depicting their own face or other unknown faces expressing anger, happiness, sadness, disgust, fear, or a neutral emotion. The results showed that processing self vs. other expressions differently modulated emotion perception at the explicit and implicit muscular levels. Participants were significantly less accurate in recognizing their own vs. others’ neutral expressions and rated fearful, disgusted, and neutral expressions as more arousing in the self condition than in the other condition. Even facial EMG evidenced different activations for self vs. other facial expressions. Increased activation of the ZM muscle was found in the self condition compared to the other condition for anger and disgust. Activation of the CS muscle was lower for self than for others’ expressions during processing a happy, sad, fearful, or neutral emotion. Finally, the LLS muscle showed increased activation in the self condition compared to the other condition for sad and fearful expressions but increased activation in the other condition compared to the self condition for happy and neutral expressions. Taken together, our complex pattern of results suggests a dissociation at both the explicit and implicit levels in emotional processing of self vs. other emotions that, in the light of the Emotion in Context view, suggests that STM effectiveness is primarily due to a contextual–interpretative process that occurs before that facial mimicry takes place.

Recognition of emotions conveyed by facial expression and body postures in myotonic dystrophy (DM)

IntroductionNeuromuscular diseases may be of neuropsychological interest insofar as they may affect representations based on embodied cognition theories. Previous studies have shown impaired ability to recognize facial emotions and an association between facial emotion recognition and visuospatial abilities in myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) patients. Here we examined the ability of both DM1 and DM2 patients to recognize emotions expressed by body postures and its relation, and their association with cognitive performance. MethodsParticipants included 34 DM1 patients, 8 DM2 patients, and 24 healthy control subjects. Emotional recognition ability was assessed through two computerized matching tasks (face and bodies). A neuropsychological battery was used to measure cognition in three domains and global cognition. We used univariate and adjusted linear regression models to investigate the association between cognition and emotion recognition performance. ResultsDM patients (combined DM1 and DM2) performed worse on emotional facial expression (p = .006) and body posture (p = .004) accuracy measures than healthy controls. In linear regression models, DM patients’ facial expression accuracy was associated with executive function (p = .013) and visuospatial (p < .001) z-scores. Body posture accuracy was associated with visuospatial (p = .001) and memory (p = .012) z-scores. There were no associations among controls or between cognition and reaction time. DiscussionThese findings suggest that impaired emotional recognition among DM patients is also extended to emotions conveyed by body postures. Consistent with embodied cognition theories, people affected in their body and its movement may have impaired sensorimotor representation in ways that have yet to be fully understood.

Looking at ancillary systems for verb recovery: Evidence from non-invasive brain stimulation

Several behavioural and neuroimaging studies have suggested that the language function is not restricted into the left areas but it involves regions not predicted by the classical language model. Accordingly, the Embodied Cognition theory postulates a close interaction between the language and the motor system. Indeed, it has been shown that non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) is effective for language recovery also when applied over sensorimotor regions, such as the motor cortex, the cerebellum and the spinal cord.We will review a series of NIBS studies in post-stroke aphasic people aimed to assess the impact of NIBS on verb recovery. We first present results which, following the classical assumption of the Broca’s area as the key region for verb processing, have shown that the modulation over this area is efficacious for verb improvement. Then, we will present experiments which, according to Embodied Cognition, have directly investigated through NIBS the role of different sensorimotor regions in enhancing verb production.Since verbs play a crucial role for sentence construction which are most often impaired in the aphasic population, we believe that these results have important clinical implications. Indeed, they address the possibility that different structures might support verb processing.

Children’s Engineering Design Thinking Processes: The Magic of the ROBOTS and the Power of BLOCKS (Electronics)

Background:This paper presents findings from an on-going international study of Early Childhood (EC) teachers’ and children’s use of internet-connected toys (IoToys) to understand possibilities for developing children’s cognitive capacities (e.g., creativity, inquiry, engineering design thinking).Material and methods:The study employed a Design Based Research (DBR) method, where teachers intentionally plan and deliver technologically constructed Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) experiences for preschoolers. Using Australia as a case study, data collection involved participant observation of three teachers’ and 17 children’s technology constructed play experiences with robotic toys, littleBits electronic magnetic blocks, alongside pre and post semi-structured interviews with teachers and children’s photo voice sessions were video recorded.Results:Analysing the findings using embodied cognition theory showed that the teachers, although novice in their own technological pedagogical knowledge engaged children's play with the robotic toys, and co-learn with the children. Integration of STEM-focused playful experiences supported children’s scientific inquiry, design thinking and creativity as well as vocabulary targeted at interdisciplinary STEM concepts.Conclusions:With the ever increasing focus on developing children’s 21st century skills, this study recommends engineering habits of mind, creativity and inquiry dispositions should now be taken into account in teaching and learning situations with young children and to develop STEM engagement.

Atmospheres: Feeling Architecture by Emotions

What is architectural atmosphere? To answer this question, we propose a paradox: a precise definition of the inherently vague and ambiguous concept of atmosphere that satisfies, as so far as possible, scientific criteria and methodology. We suggest that the term atmosphere, understood in an architectural context, defines a state of resonance and identification (sensorimotor, emotive, and cognitive) between an individual and their surrounding built space. Human beings can empathise with inanimate rooms when they interiorly establish an embodied simulation of certain architectural features. Thus, atmospheres might be determined, mapped, and measured through quantitative methods tracing emotional, cognitive, and neurophysiological responses of individuals to spatial conditions.The exploratory study illustrated attempts to test this hypothesis, by undertaking an experiment informed by phenomenological and embodied cognition theories. We analysed the spatial unit of the corridor, altered in twenty-one variations. We modified one potentially atmospheric parameter at a time, and collected emotional responses of participants. Subjects interacted with immersive virtual-reality settings. Our findings demonstrate that an experimental approach is applicable to evaluating atmospheric perception and suggest which architectural features seem to interplay with the empathic sensibility of the perceiver (i.e. colours and material patterns) and which ones do not (i.e. lighting qualities).

Do not turn your head when estimating the distance: influence of head rotation on distance judgement.

According to the mental number line (MNL) concept, people mentally represent numbers along a line with smaller values on the left and greater on the right. Embodied cognition theory assumes that MNL is activated by postural bias and in turn affects cognitive processes; for example, research shows that quantitative estimates are smaller when participants' bodies are leaning to the left than to the right. In this study, we tested whether distance estimation in the natural environment is influenced by head rotation. Outdoors, participants gave verbal reports about egocentric distances while keeping their head turned left, turned right, or in the straight-ahead position. Results showed that distance estimates were greater when participants rotated their head right as compared to left. Additionally, we tested whether the MNL is activated by camera-based image movement indicating that the camera is rotating left or right. Participants estimated distances in videos recorded with camera rotation, and the videos were viewed without any postural bias; estimates were similar for camera rotating left and right. The study thus demonstrates that proprioceptive information seems to be necessary for activation of the MNL, which in turn influences verbal distance estimation in the outdoor space.

Plataforma para la Creación de Audiojuegos: una Solución Mediante el uso de Interfaces Enactivas

Se presentan en este trabajo los principales avances de la primer etapa del proyecto de tesis “Plataforma para la creación de audiojuegos: una solución mediante el uso de interfaces enactivas”, de la carrera Doctorado en Ingeniería mención Electrónica, de la Universidad Tecnológica Nacional, Facultad Regional Córdoba. Este proyecto busca contribuir al conocimiento en el diseño de tecnologías de apoyo e inclusión a personas con diversidad funcional visual. Se plantea la investigación y desarrollo de una solución integrada de hardware-software + diferentes aplicaciones (audiojuegos) guiada mediante el enfoque innovador provisto por teorías de cognición corporizada y de interfaces hombre máquina de tipo enactivas. Los objetivos planteados contemplan la generación de un espacio mediado tecnológicamente donde se habilite el entretenimiento, entrenamiento de habilidades de audición espacial e inclusión de personas con diferentes capacidades visuales.

From action to abstraction: The sensorimotor grounding of metaphor in Parkinson's disease

Embodied cognition theories propose that the semantic representations engaged in during language comprehension are partly supported by perceptual and motor systems, via simulation. Activation in modality-specific regions of cortex is associated with the comprehension of literal language that describes the analogous modalities, but studies addressing the grounding of non-literal or figurative language, such as metaphors, have yielded mixed results. Differences in the psycholinguistic characteristics of sentence stimuli across studies have likely contributed to this lack of consensus. Furthermore, previous studies have been largely correlational, whilst patient studies are a critical way of determining if intact sensorimotor function is necessary to understand language drawing on sensorimotor information. We designed a battery of metaphorical and literal sentence stimuli using action and sound words, with an unprecedented level of control over critical psycholinguistic variables, to test hypotheses about the grounding of metaphorical language. In this Registered Report, we assessed the comprehension of these sentences in 41 patients with Parkinson's disease, who were predicted to be disproportionately affected by the action sentences relative to the sound sentences, and compared their performance to that of 39 healthy age-matched controls who were predicted to show no difference in performance due to sensory modality. Using preregistered Bayesian model comparison methods, we found that PD patients' comprehension of literal action sentences was not impaired, while there was some evidence for a slowing of responses to action metaphors. Follow up exploratory analyses suggest that this response time modality effect was driven by one type of metaphor (predicate) and was absent in another (nominal), despite the fact that the action semantics were similar in both syntactic forms. These results suggest that the conditions under which PD patients demonstrate hypothesized embodiment effects are limited. We offer a critical assessment of the PD action language literature and discuss implications for the embodiment debate. In addition, we suggest how future studies could leverage Bayesian statistical methods to provide more convincing evidence for or against embodied cognition effects.

Human Action Pattern Recognition and Semantic Research Based on Embodied Cognition Theory

Human body motion pattern recognition in video images is an important research direction in the field of pattern recognition. It has a very broad application prospect in many fields such as intelligent video surveillance, human-computer interaction, motion analysis, video retrieval, etc. Research has also received extensive attention from scholars at home and abroad. Pattern recognition is essentially a branch of artificial intelligence. It has its unique role in the field of artificial intelligence. Accurate recognition of human body motion patterns in video images is of great help in image classification, retrieval, human tracking and video surveillance. Based on the human visual perception mechanism, this paper proposes a human behavior recognition algorithm based on semantic saliency map. Through the combination of sliding window and similarity measure, the behavioral region that best exhibits the semantic features of the image is found, which is the semantically significant region. The semantic significant region and the original image are used as the dual input source to study the human behavior recognition, and the image is enhanced. The utilization of significant regional information better reveals the identifiable area of the image and contributes to the recognition of human behavior.

Performance musical e o corpo: sobre os gestos expressivos “acompanhantes”

The paper focuses on different concepts about "gesture" that support the musical perfor-mance, relating them with the concepts of "movement" and "bodily gesture" (Madeira &amp; Scar-duelli, 2014) and "affordances" (Gibson, 1979) to then discuss the gesture typology as a basis for a model of cognitive musical analysis (Ben-Tal, 2012; Zbikowski, 2011, Madeira &amp; Scardu-elli, 2015). The paper intends to discuss the idea that physical gestures that constitute the mu-sical performance contain information on the musical expression (Leman et al., 2012; David-son, 2012), associating these concepts to explain how the interaction between instrument-performer determines the understanding of the musician and the result of the artistic produc-tion. The gestural will be approached through the embodied cognition theory (Johnson, 1987) and the instrument through the ecological approach discussed by Windsor and de Bézenac (2012). The review previously mentioned intended to relate concepts to clarify the concept of "gesture" in musical performance. The research recognizes the gesture as an act of the per-former's expressive character while codifying and resulting in cognitive processes. The paper considers that, in today's research, there is an overrating of the gestural directly involved in sound production and negligence in studying the "accompanying" gesture. The paper's cen-tral hypothesis is the importance of this accompanying/expressive gesture in the perfor-mance, which reveals unique information about the musical discourse.

The embodiment of language in tremor-dominant Parkinson’s disease patients

According to embodied cognition, processing language with motor content involves a simulation of this content by the brain motor system. Patients with brain lesions involving the motor system are characterized by deficits in action verbs processing in the absence of dementia. We sought to assess whether action verbs interfere with the motor behavior of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) having tremor dominant symptoms. PD tremor is considered to result from dysfunction of cortical-subcortical motor circuits driven by dopamine depletion. In addition, PD tremor is reduced during active movement execution. Therefore, likewise movement execution, the motor simulation of bodily actions predicted by the embodiment may show to be effective in modifying tremor by interfering with a dysfunctional motor system. Here, we asked to simply read and repeat words expressing a hand-related bodily action. Abstract verbs served as control. Changes in tremor kinematics were evaluated using a monoaxial accelerometer. Seventeen PD patients with rest tremor of the upper limbs were enrolled. Tremor amplitude was significantly smaller when reading action verbs as compared to abstract verbs. We provide empirical evidence supporting the embodied cognition theory by showing that circuits mediating tremor of PD patients are distinctively affected by processing action language.

The Exploring the Applicability of Activity-based Lessons in Social Studied based on the Embodied Cognition Theory

본 연구는 선행연구에서 제안한 체화인지론 기반 사회과 활동을 실제 현장에 적용해봄으로써 이의 활용 가능성을 탐색하고자 하였다. 실제 현장에서 예상치 못한 상황을 감각적으로 대처해가며 보다 나은 활동 방안을 탐색하는 과정을 나타내고자 하였다. 이를 위해 총 두 번에 걸쳐 체화인지론에 기반한 사회과 활동을 적용해보고 그 결과를 분석하고자 하였다. 또한 동료 연구자와 함께 동일한 활동을 적용하고 성찰해봄으로써, 보다 나은 활동 방안을 찾고자 하였다. 궁극적으로 이러한 실천을 통해 이론적이고 형식적인 지식이 학생들의 삶과 만나는 상황을 이루고자 하였다. 그리고 이러한 수업 실천 속에서 체화된 경험은 이야기를 통해 현상 그대로를 나타내고자 하였다. 그 결과 무엇보다 학생들은 자신의 몸으로서 느끼는 수업을 매우 흥미로워했다. 또한 교사의 발문을 통해 수업 활동과 사회과 개념을 관련짓기도 하였다. 하지만 두 번의 수업에도 불구하고 여전히 학생들이 수업 활동과 실제의 삶을 연결 짓지 못하는 경우가 발견되었다. 본 연구의 실천 과정에서 나타난 미흡한 점들에 대한 보완이 필요하다. 이처럼 본 연구는 선행연구를 통해 구안한 수업 방법이 현장에서 적용 가능한지를 살펴보는 실험적 성격을 띠고 있다. 그럼에도 불구하고 본 연구는 체화인지론에 기반한 사회과 활동을 실제 현장에서 적용해보고 그 가능성을 탐색했다는 점에서 의의가 있다고 할 수 있다. 추후에도 실천적인 교육적 숙고와 체화된 행위, 그리고 성찰을 통해 보다 완성도 높은 사회과 활동 중심 수업을 모색하고자 한다.The purpose of this study is to find out the possibility of applying the proposed activity-based lessons in social studies based on the embodied cognition theory to the actual field. The purpose of the project was to show the process of sensitively coping with unexpected situations and exploring better ways of activity in the field application process. To this end, we applied social studies and activities based on the embodied cognition theory on two occasions and analyzed the results. We also tried to find better ways to do it by applying and reflecting on the same activities with fellow researchers. And the experience of this classroom practice was to show the status quo through the story. As a result, most of all, the classes students feel as their bodies are very interesting. It also related activities and social and social concepts in class through teacher s questioning. However, despite the two-time classroom practice, students were still found to be unable to connect their activities with their real life. As such, this study has an experimental nature to examine whether the method of teaching designed through prior study is field applicable. Nevertheless, this study is meaningful in that social studies and activities based on the embodied cognition theory were applied in actual field and explored their potential. In the future, it is necessary to supplement the activities through practical educational deliberation, embodiment, and reflection.

Information, Communication and Art

Abstract From Karl Marx to Martin Heidegger, the dialectical relationship between technology and art has become an ontological question of social reality. Marshall McLuhan’s theory of cool-hot media provides an analytical framework for the information age. “Cool-hot media” is McLuhan’s truly original concept. However, while McLuhan determined electronic media to embrace printing media which was regarded as a typical representative of hot media, he could not foresee that electronic media is properly speaking the latest representative of the split type of hot media. Through Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems which underlies formalization and Embodied Cognition Theory, this article argues that there exists an ontological difference between computers and human existence and explores the position of art from the contemporary cool media perspective. This contribution is not only intended to be a philosophical critique of the philosophy of technology of the media age, but also a repositioning of contemporary art and its function from the media perspective. The technological division and abstraction represented in hot media becomes the basic premise for a holistic approach to computer science and artificial intelligence. Their rich information context leads to multiple interpretations of meaning instead of a one-dimensional definition; the everyday actions of cold media have become a type of life art in a broad sense, and manifest their social function as an art of the information age, i.e. to balance the cognitive narrative of hot media and to ensure that its communication does not suppress the audience’s individual creativity, so that they can maintain their subjectivity by tracing the source of information. Art facilitates active audience participation and so allows participants to overcome a one dimensional way of thinking and promotes imagination and creativity in liberal arts education. Following the rules of art, cold media obtains its greatest significance as the guardian of the free subjectivity of all humans, which is alien to modern technology. Cold media and hot media balance each other to create a new way of producing and living that not only discovers but also safeguards the world.

Processing derived verbs: the role of motor-relatedness and type of morphological priming

ABSTRACTThere is no consensus on whether derived words are decomposed or processed holistically, and on which factors this depends. Using overt visual priming with lexical decision involving Dutch derived particle verbs, we manipulated three factors: semantic transparency of the derived words, motor-relatedness of the simple verb constituent, and type of morphological priming. Experiments 1 and 2 (using simple verbs primed by their derivations or vice versa) showed overall facilitatory morphological priming effects, independent of transparency or motor-relatedness. In Experiment 3 (using priming between the derivation and a word semantically related to its stem), only transparent motor-related derivations were primed. The combined results suggest that the processing of derivations is influenced by priming type: constituent priming (Exp. 1 & 2) may induce a bias towards a decompositional processing strategy, possibly by directing attention to the stimuli's morphological structure. The role of motor-relatedness is discussed in the context of embodied cognition theory.

Anticipation of wheelchair and rollerblade actions in spinal cord injured people, rollerbladers, and physiotherapists.

Embodied Cognition Theories (ECT) postulate that higher-order cognition is heavily influenced by sensorimotor signals. We explored the active role of somatosensory afferents and motor efferents in modulating the perception of actions in people who have suffered a massive body-brain disconnection because of spinal cord injury (SCI), which leads to sensory-motor loss below the lesion. We assessed whether the habitual use of a wheelchair enhances the capacity to anticipate the endings of tool-related actions, with respect to actions that have become impossible. In a Temporal Occlusion task, three groups of participants (paraplegics, rollerbladers and physiotherapists) observed two sets of videos depicting an actor who attempted to climb onto a platform using a wheelchair or rollerblades. Three different outcomes were possible, namely: a) success (the actor went up the step); b) fail (the actor stopped before the step without going up) and c) fall (the actor fell without going up). Each video set comprised 5 different durations increasing in complexity: in the shortest (600ms) only preparatory body movements were shown and in the longest (3000ms) the complete action was shown. The participants were requested to anticipate the outcome (success, fail, fall). The main result showed that the SCI group performed better with the wheelchair videos and poorer with rollerblade videos than both groups, even if the physiotherapists group never used rollerblades. In line with the ECT, this suggests that the action anticipation skills are not only influenced by motor expertise, but also by motor connection.

A study on the Organizing of a Activity - Centered Lesson in Social Studies based on the Embodied Cognition Theory

A study on the Organizing of a Activity - Centered Lesson in Social Studies based on the Embodied Cognition Theory

Congenital facial palsy and emotion processing: The case of Moebius syndrome.

According to the Darwinian perspective, facial expressions of emotions evolved to quickly communicate emotional states and would serve adaptive functions that promote social interactions. Embodied cognition theories suggest that we understand others' emotions by reproducing the perceived expression in our own facial musculature (facial mimicry) and the mere observation of a facial expression can evoke the corresponding emotion in the perceivers. Consequently, the inability to form facial expressions would affect the experience of emotional understanding. In this review, we aimed at providing account on the link between the lack of emotion production and the mechanisms of emotion processing. We address this issue by taking into account Moebius syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that primarily affects the muscles controlling facial expressions. Individuals with Moebius syndrome are born with facial paralysis and inability to form facial expressions. This makes them the ideal population to study whether facial mimicry is necessary for emotion understanding. Here, we discuss behavioral ambiguous/mixed results on emotion recognition deficits in Moebius syndrome suggesting the need to investigate further aspects of emotional processing such as the physiological responses associated with the emotional experience during developmental age.

A cross-linguistic study of metaphors of death

AbstractThe avoidance of directly addressing human mortality indicates fear of death. This fear elicits psychological, social and religious interdictions in language such that people resort to the use of metaphors to avoid confronting death. Under the premise that metaphor is a conceptual mapping from a concrete source to an abstract target domain, this study aims to identify and categorize euphemistic metaphors of death in six languages: Chinese, Farsi, Gĩkũyũ, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. Those metaphors are interpreted via the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT). In doing so, 40 speakers in each of the languages were asked to complete a short questionnaire. Various metaphors of death were identified in each language and categorized into four conceptual metaphors:death is a journey; death is the end; death is a rest; anddeath is a summons. The key finding is that the most common metaphor of death isdeath is a journey. This holds across linguistic groups regardless of gender and age factors. This study also discusses the role of embodied cognition theories in accounting for how metaphors of death are created and their role within cognition in general.

Does TMS Disruption of the Left Primary Motor Cortex Affect Verb Retrieval Following Exposure to Pantomimed Gestures?

Previous research suggests that meaning-laden gestures, even when produced in the absence of language (i.e., pantomimed gestures), influence lexical retrieval. Yet, little is known about the neural mechanisms that underlie this process. Based on embodied cognition theories, many studies have demonstrated motor cortex involvement in the representation of action verbs and in the understanding of actions. The present study aimed to investigate whether the motor system plays a critical role in the behavioral influence of pantomimed gestures on action naming. Continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) was applied over the hand area of the left primary motor cortex and to a control site (occipital cortex). An action-picture naming task followed cTBS. In the naming task, participants named action pictures that were preceded by videos of congruent pantomimed gestures, unrelated pantomimed gestures or a control video with no movement (as a neutral, non-gestural condition). In addition to behavioral measures of performance, cTBS-induced changes in corticospinal activity were assessed. We replicated previous finding that exposure to congruent pantomimed gestures facilitates word production, compared to unrelated or neutral primes. However, we found no evidence that the left primary motor area is crucially involved in the mechanism underlying behavioral facilitation effects of gesture on verb production. Although, at the group level, cTBS induced motor cortex suppression, at the individual level we found remarkable variability of cTBS effects on the motor cortex. We found cTBS induction of both inhibition of corticospinal activity (with slower behavioral of responses) and enhancement (with faster behavioral responses). Our findings cast doubt on assumptions that the motor cortex is causally involved in the impact of gestures on action-word processing. Our results also highlight the importance of careful consideration of interindividual variability for the interpretation of cTBS effects.