Parallels between Sensory and Motor Information Processing

Abstract

The computational problems solved by the sensory and motor systems appear very different: One has to do with inferring the state of the world given sensory data, the other with generating motor commands appropriate for given task goals. However recent mathematical developments summarized in this chapter show that these two problems are in many ways related. Therefore information processing in the sensory and motor systems may be more similar than was previously thought—not only in terms of computations, but also in terms of algorithms and neural representations. Here, we explore these similarities and clarify some differences between the two systems.