The illusion of internal models in biological movement.
European journal of applied physiology November 1, 2025 Madhur Mangalam 8 citations
Internal models—computational representations supposedly stored in the nervous system—dominate current theories of how animals control movement. This perspective argues that such representational approaches fundamentally mischaracterize biological systems for six reasons: they require an infinite regress of internal interpreters; decades of research have failed to find neural evidence for them; biological movement is nonlinear and multiscale, not reducible to conventional computations; they implicitly rely on Cartesian dualism by separating a controller from what is controlled; the framework is circular and unfalsifiable; and alternative ecological dynamics and self-organization explain adaptive behavior without representations. Sensorimotor control instead emerges from dynamic coupling between organism and environment across multiple scales.