Holmes, N. P.
School of Psychology & Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, UK
The idea that tools are extensions of our body is an fascinating idea that appears in artistic, literary, philoshical, and scientific work. In the last fifteen years, this idea has been studied extensively in the cognitive neurosciences, with evidence from molecular, neurophysiological, neuroimaging, neuropsychological, and behavioural fields. In my talk, I will briefly review the main sources of evidence for and against the hypothesis that tool use extends a neural representation of the space surrounding the hands. I will argue both that the original neurophysiological data in monkeys do not show that tool use extends the representation of nearby space, and that subsequent behavioural data from humans are consistent with multiple alternative explanations. I conclude that, after fifteen years, clear support for the hypothesis that tool use extends peripersonal space is still lacking.