Foundational Readings on Embodied Cognition
This list is most likely far from complete. Though, I believe it would provide a good place to start learning about different approaches to embodiment. Reading the Embodied Cognition entry on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy first would provide a good scaffold before getting into the rest of the work listed below.
Books
Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1980). Autopoiesis and cognition: The realization of the living. D. Reidel. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8947-4
Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1987). The tree of knowledge: The biological roots of human understanding. Shambhala.
Clark, A. (1997). Being there: Putting brain, body, and world together again. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/1552.001.0001
Dreyfus, H. L. (1972). What computers can't do: A critique of artificial reason. MIT Press.
Gibbs, R. W. (2006). Embodiment and cognitive science. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511805844
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226470993.001.0001
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. Basic Books.
Noë, A. (2004). Action in perception. MIT Press.
Thelen, E., & Smith, L. B. (1994). A dynamic systems approach to the development of cognition and action. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/2524.001.0001
Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/6730.001.0001
Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012). Phenomenology of perception (D. A. Landes, Trans.). Routledge. (Original work published 1945.)
Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Houghton Mifflin.
Pecher, D., & Zwaan, R. A. (Eds.). (2005). Grounding cognition: The role of perception and action in memory, language, and thinking. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511499968
Pessoa, L. (2022). The entangled brain: How perception, cognition, and emotion are woven together. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/14636.001.0001
Gallagher, S. (2017). Enactivist interventions: Rethinking the mind. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198794325.001.0001
Anderson, M. L. (2014). After phrenology: Neural reuse and the interactive brain. MIT Press. MIT Press book page
Articles
Embodied cognition and enactivism
Gibson, J. J. (1977). The theory of affordances. In R. Shaw & J. Bransford (Eds.), Perceiving, acting, and knowing: Toward an ecological psychology (pp. 67–82). Lawrence Erlbaum.
O'Regan, J. K., & Noë, A. (2001). A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(5), 939–973. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X01000115
Grounded cognition / conceptual representation
Barsalou, L. W. (1999). Perceptual symbol systems. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22(4), 577–660. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X99002149
Barsalou, L. W. (2003). Situated simulation in the human conceptual system. Language and Cognitive Processes, 18(5–6), 513–562. https://doi.org/10.1080/01690960344000026
Barsalou, L. W. (2008). Grounded cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 617–645. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.59.103006.093639
Barsalou, L. W. (2010). Grounded cognition: Past, present, and future. Topics in Cognitive Science, 2(4), 716–724. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1756-8765.2010.01115.x
Binder, J. R., & Desai, R. H. (2011). The neurobiology of semantic memory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15(11), 527–536. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2011.10.001
Glenberg, A. M. (1997). What memory is for. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 20(1), 1–55. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X97000010
Glenberg, A. M. (2010). Embodiment as a unifying perspective for psychology. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 1(4), 586–596. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.55
Glenberg, A. M., & Robertson, D. A. (2000). Symbol grounding and meaning: A comparison of high-dimensional and embodied theories of meaning. Journal of Memory and Language, 43(3), 379–401. https://doi.org/10.1006/jmla.2000.2714
Language and action
Gallese, V., & Lakoff, G. (2005). The brain's concepts: The role of the sensory-motor system in conceptual knowledge. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 22(3–4), 455–479. https://doi.org/10.1080/02643290442000310
Glenberg, A. M., & Kaschak, M. P. (2002). Grounding language in action. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 9(3), 558–565. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196313
Pulvermüller, F. (2005). Brain mechanisms linking language and action. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6(7), 576–582. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1706
Pulvermüller, F. (2013). How neurons make meaning: Brain mechanisms for embodied and abstract-symbolic semantics. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(9), 458–470. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2013.06.001
Rueschemeyer, S.-A., Lindemann, O., van Rooij, D., van Dam, W., & Bekkering, H. (2010). Effects of action constraint on action language processing. Cognitive Neuroscience, 1(1), 53–59.
Zwaan, R. A. (2004). The immersed experiencer: Toward an embodied theory of language comprehension. Psychological Review, 111(2), 466–476. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.111.2.466
Perception, action, and sensorimotor cognition
Hommel, B., Müsseler, J., Aschersleben, G., & Prinz, W. (2001). The Theory of Event Coding (TEC): A framework for perception and action planning. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(5), 849–937. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X01000103
Jeannerod, M. (1994). The representing brain: Neural correlates of motor intention and imagery. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 17(2), 187–245. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00034026
Prinz, W. (1997). Perception and action planning. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 9(2), 129–154.
Wilson, M. (2002). Six views of embodied cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 9(4), 625–636. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196322
Embodied emotion and social cognition
Adolphs, R. (2009). The social brain: Neural basis of social knowledge. Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 693–716. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163514
Barsalou, L. W., Niedenthal, P. M., Barbey, A., & Ruppert, J. (2003). Social embodiment. In B. H. Ross (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 43, pp. 43–92). Academic Press.
Niedenthal, P. M. (2007). Embodying emotion. Science, 316(5827), 1002–1005. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1136930
Niedenthal, P. M., Barsalou, L. W., Winkielman, P., Krauth-Gruber, S., & Ric, F. (2005). Embodiment in attitudes, social perception, and emotion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9(3), 184–211. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr0903_1