Juggling with rubber hands, leaping with rubber feet: Sensorimotor reuse during verb comprehension

Theories of embodied and grounded cognition suggest that the reuse of sensorimotor information supports word comprehension. In the current study, we induced body ownership illusions of the hands and feet (and related control conditions) while participants categorized verbs related to the hands and feet. Using representational similarity analysis (RSA) we demonstrate that sensorimotor information is decodable during verb categorization at around 600 ms in control conditions and around 400 ms for hand related verbs specifically. Further, the pattern of sensorimotor activity elicited during verb categorization is altered when participants experience body ownership illusions; decoding is earlier when sensorimotor information was pre-activated with illusions. Overall, our results suggest that preactivating sensorimotor information alters the neural dynamics supporting verb comprehension, providing evidence for a neurocognitive process that reuses sensorimotor information. These results contribute to the development of models for embodied and grounded cognition and provide insight into the dynamics of neural reuse.