Samuel McDougle

Humans possess an extraordinary capacity for motor skills. Alongside language (which is itself partly a motor skill) and complex social cognition, one of our species’ defining features is the ability to develop a vast repertoire of precise motor behaviors. While we often refer to “muscle memory” (a useful misnomer) in everyday language, acquiring and performing motor skills involves more than just habit formation—it is also cognitively demanding. Expertise in domains such as athletics, music, and even everyday skills relies on the interaction of cognitive processes and lower-level motor systems. At the Action, Computation, and Thinking (ACT) Lab, we explore the intersection of cognition and motor behavior using a range of methods, including behavioral experiments, computational modeling, neuroimaging, and neuropsychology.