Embodied Memory

This chapter aims at exploring the concept of embodied memory, that is, the notion that the body and its sensorimotor pathways play a crucial role in memory processes. This theoretical perspective on memory is part of a broader theoretical shift in cognitive science that has led to the so-called “embodied cognition” approach. The embodied cognition approach assumes that memories can be viewed as a kind of sensorimotor mental simulations, consisting in the reactivation of sensorimotor patterns originally associated (or assumed to be associated) with events at encoding, and that the body is the medium where (and through which) sensorimotor modalities simulate the motor components of remembered events. Thus, when humans remember a particular event or content, they use their body (and its sensorimotor pathways) to create a mental simulation of the event or content that contains vivid sensory and motor details. This chapter will present both the evidence for this approach and its limitations.