Action and Physical World Understanding
Lead Investigator: Giovanni Federico
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This research topic explores the cognitive and neural foundations that guide our ability to understand actions—both our own and those performed by others—and to reason about the mechanical properties and causal structures of the physical world. By integrating insights from cognitive neuroscience, comparative psychology and experimental psychology, the research group seeks to uncover how the brain encodes and organizes information about objects, movements, and events in space and time. Central themes include examining how we learn to anticipate the effects of our movements, how we mentally simulate actions, and how we seamlessly adapt our actions in response to changing contexts. This approach involves studying the cognitive processes and brain networks that mediate tool use, revealing how action understanding is closely tied to sensorimotor experience, and enabling complex tasks such as manipulation and recognition of objects.
Key lab members
Methods
Behavioral studies
Comparative Psychology
Eye-tracking
Neuroimaging
Latest publications
Osiurak, F., Federico, G., Fournel, A. et al. (in press). Shaping the physical world to our ends: The left PF technical-cognition area. eLife 13:RP94578.
Federico, G., Osiurak, F., Ilardi, C. R. et al. (2025). Mechanical and semantic knowledge mediate the implicit understanding of the physical world. Brain and Cognition, 183, 106253.
Federico, G., Osiurak, F., Ciccarelli, G. et al. (2023). On the functional brain networks involved in tool-related action understanding. Nature Communications Biology 6, 1163.
Federico, G. (2023). Eating Russula mushrooms is a matter of semantic knowledge. Comment on “The elicitation of affordance depends on conceptual attributes: evidence from a virtual reality study” by Lai et al.(2023). Experimental Brain Research, 241, 1459–146.
Lesourd, M., Reynaud, E., Navarro, J., Gaujoux, V., Faye-Védrines, A., ... & Osiurak, F. (2023). Involvement of the posterior tool processing network during explicit retrieval of action tool and semantic tool knowledge: an fMRI study. Cerebral Cortex, 33(11).
Federico, G., Cavaliere, C., Reynaud, E., Salvatore, M., Brandimonte, M. A., & Osiurak, F. (2022). The Area Prostriata may play a role in technical reasoning. Behavioral and Brain Functions, 18(1), 1-4.
Federico, G., Reynaud, E., Navarro, J., Lesourd, M., Gaujoux, V., Lamberton, F., ... & Osiurak, F. (2022). The cortical thickness of the area PF of the left inferior parietal cortex mediates technical-reasoning skills. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 11840.
Federico, G., Osiurak, F., Brandimonte, M. A., Salvatore, M., & Cavaliere, C. (2023). The visual encoding of graspable unfamiliar objects. Psychological Research, 87(2), 452-461.
Federico, G., & Brandimonte, M. A. (2022). Il ruolo del ragionamento e dell'elaborazione semantica nell'uso di utensili: la prospettiva integrata dell’action reappraisal. TOPIC-Temi Di Psicologia Dell'ordine Degli Psicologi Della Campania, 1(1), 10-53240.
Brandimonte, M. A., & Federico, G. (2022). Verso un approccio integrato dei sistemi di conoscenza semantica e sensomotoria. Giornale italiano di psicologia, 49(2), 429-435.
Osiurak, F., & Federico, G. (2021). Four ways of (mis-) conceiving embodiment in tool use. Synthese, 199(1-2), 3853-3879.
Federico, G., Osiurak, F., Reynaud, E., & Brandimonte, M. A. (2021). Semantic congruency effects of prime words on tool visual exploration. Brain and Cognition, 152, 105758.
Federico, G., Osiurak, F., & Brandimonte, M. A. (2021). Hazardous tools: the emergence of reasoning in human tool use. Psychological Research, 1-11.
Federico, G., & Brandimonte, M. A. (2020). Looking to recognise: The pre-eminence of semantic over sensorimotor processing in human tool use. Scientific Reports, 10 (1): 6157.
Osiurak, F., Federico, G., Brandimonte, M. A., Reynaud, E., & Lesourd, M. (2020). On the temporal dynamics of tool use. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 518.
Federico, G., & Brandimonte, M. A. (2019). Tool and object affordances: An ecological eye-tracking study. Brain and Cognition, 135, 103582.
Book chapters
Osiurak, F., & Federico, G. (2024). Affordance and tool use: A neurocognitive approach. In M. Mangalam, A. Hajnal, & D. G. Kelty-Stephen (Eds.), The modern legacy of Gibson’s affordances for the sciences of organisms. New York: Routledge.
Federico, G., & Osiurak, F. (2023). Parietal cortex and cumulative technological culture. In E. Bruner (Ed.), Cognitive archaeology, body cognition, and the evolution of visuospatial perception (pp. 109-130). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
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