Limb apraxia and active inference in the visuomotor pathways

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, vol. 33

Abstract

This study presents a unified neurocomputational account of apraxia within the visuomotor system using the active inference framework. In this framework, the brain encodes a generative model of the causes of sensory observations and continually reduces the surprise (or, more formally, variational free energy) associated with these observations. Our goal is to illustrate how the neuroanatomical and neurofunctional organization of the visuomotor system are emergent consequences of this minimization under the appropriate generative model, while apraxia arises from incorrect parameterizations of that model. Our active inference model of the visuomotor pathways provides a unifying perspective on key findings in the neuropsychological literature. By virtually simulating impairments in the model, we explain key aspects of five neuropsychological syndromes impacting cognitive aspects of motor behavior. This study therefore, provides a novel hypothesis about the neurocomputational basis of these pathologies and offers a formal quantitative approach to support clinical research.

Authors 4

1. Riccardo Proietti

   National Research Council · Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies · University of Bologna

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Italy

   Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council, Rome, Italy

2. Giovanni Pezzulo

   National Research Council · Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies , National Research Council , Rome , Italy

   Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council, Rome, Italy

3. Ferdinand Binkofski Aachen Division of Clinical Cognitive Sciences Department of Neurology

   Forschungszentrum Jülich · RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Division of Clinical Cognitive Sciences , Department of Neurology , RWTH Aachen University , Aachen , Germany

   Institute for Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-4) , Research Center Jülich GmbH , Jülich , Germany

   Division of Clinical Cognitive Sciences, Department of Neurology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

   Institute for Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-4), Research Center Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany

4. Alessia Tessari

   University of Bologna

   Affiliation as printed

   Alma Mater Research Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence , University of Bologna , Bologna , Italy

   Department of Psychology , University of Bologna , Italy

   Alma Mater Research Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

   Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Italy