How does our body extend its senses through different art mediums?
1) The Painter’s Tool
With practice, a painter stops thinking only about holding a brush. Pressure, angle, and motion become sensory cues, allowing the brush to feel like an extension of the hand. What begins as a separate object gradually becomes part of a larger system of perception and movement. The painter is not just moving pigment across a canvas—they are learning to feel texture, resistance, and flow through the tool itself. In this way, painting shows how skilled action can transform a simple object into something that supports expression, control, and embodied awareness.
2) Clay and Body Schema
A potter reads resistance through the clay. As the wheel spins, the brain continuously updates the body’s position, pressure, and force in real time. This process relates to body schema, the brain’s flexible internal map od the body in action. Rather than acting with the hands alone, the potter learns to coordinate touch, movement, and expectation through the clay and the wheel. The tool does not just help shape the object—it reshapes how the marker senses their own movements. Pottery reveals how perception and action work together, allowing the brain to extend its understanding of the body into the materials it handles.
3) The Sword In Motion
For a skilled swordsman, the blade becomes more than a weapon; it becomes an extension of the body’s movement. Through repeated practice, the brain learns to anticipate the sword’s weight, reach, and momentum, allowing movements to become increasingly fluid and precise. This process relies on sensorimotor integration, where sensory feedback and motor commands work together to coordinate movement. Over time, the swordsman develops an intuitive understanding of the blade’s position in space, without calculating each action. Research on skilled tool use suggests that familiar equipment can become incorporated into aspects of our body representations, influencing how we perceive and interact with our surroundings.
Practice your craft, expand your senses, and discover what your mind can become
About the Author
Ashe Vaughn is a neuroscience student at DePaul University with minors in psychology and biology. She loves exploring the places where the brain meets everyday life, art, culture, and all the wonderfully weird questions neuroscience can help us investigate. Through Cortex & Culture, she hopes to make neuroscience feel a little more approachable, interesting, and fun to think about.
Read more on the Honors Blog.
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