Embodiment Cognitive Science in Educational Field

Recent researches conducted in neuroscientific field emphasizes the hard link between the mind and the body: mental performance are incorporated. The founding fathers of this vision are Damasio, LeDoux and Edelman. In all mental experiences the body is involved, more or less directly. In this regard, Damasio observes how perceptual experience is constantly followed by changes at the physiological level. LeDoux emphasizes how the body is essential to emotions. “The feedback of the body, is also essential for the brain to process the conscious level.” According to the theory of Embodied cognition of Vittorio Gallese, that is the theory of embodied mind or situated, the mind dwells in a particular body. In this perspective, the cognition proves to be dependent from the experience body, a body that is characterized by its particular perceptual and motor skills. Cognition, therefore, arises from bodily interactions with the world. “The thought is on the ability of an organism to act as part of its environment”. The prospect of embodied allows more to overcome the mind/body dualism, noting that organisms have a body and a brain and that cognitive processes are based on sensor-motor processes. In recent years the neuroscience describes cognition not as information processing (according to a cognitive approach), but as a movement and action. Cognition is not only embodied but also situated in a context that strongly determines and conditions. And our body is our first context, our first item of determination.