The Surprising Science of How Your Body Controls What You See and Feel

What if the way you see the world depends not just on your eyes and brain but on your entire body and the tools you use? Neuroscience and philosophy are revealing that perception is an active, embodied process. It is something we do, not just something that happens to us.

Take the example of a hockey player gripping his stick. The stick is not just a tool; it becomes part of his body schema. When he moves the stick, his perception extends to the puck at the end of it. Similarly, a blind person using a cane perceives the environment through the cane’s tip, not the hand holding it. This phenomenon, known as tool embodiment, shows how cognition extends into the environment.

Experiments with kittens raised in the dark demonstrate that active movement is essential for normal visual development. Kittens allowed to move actively develop proper visual skills, while those passively moved do not. This underscores that perception is inseparable from action.

Motorcycling further illustrates this embodied skill. To turn left, a rider briefly steers right to initiate a lean left—a counterintuitive maneuver requiring precise sensorimotor integration. The rider’s gaze guides the bike’s trajectory, showing how perception, attention, and action form a seamless whole.

These insights challenge traditional views of the mind as isolated computation, suggesting instead that cognition is distributed across brain, body, and world. This has profound implications for understanding autonomy, skill, and selfhood.