A Unified World Model in Human Posterior Parietal Cortex
- 1California Institute of Technology
Abstract
How does the brain understand the physical world, predict future events, and plan actions? Are these problems solved by a unified world model, as hypothesized by cognitive scientists and artificial intelligence researchers? Posterior parietal cortex has been implicated in all these functions, but whether the same neurons support each of them is unknown. We recorded from the superior parietal lobule (SPL) of two tetraplegic participants implanted with microelectrode arrays. SPL units preferentially engaged by intuitive physics, judging block-tower stability and viewing naturalistic physical events, also predicted whether moving objects would collide hundreds of milliseconds before contact, generalizing between different physical scenarios. These populations also encoded which hand action the participant intended to perform. These findings identify SPL as a substrate for physical world modeling.
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BibTeX
@misc{bougou2026unified,
title = {{A Unified World Model in Human Posterior Parietal Cortex}},
author = {V. Bougou and R. Pramod and E. R. Rosario and K. Pejsa and A. Bari and J. B. Tenenbaum and N. Kanwisher and R. A. Andersen},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.30.762936},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.30.762936v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - A Unified World Model in Human Posterior Parietal Cortex
AU - V. Bougou
AU - R. Pramod
AU - E. R. Rosario
AU - K. Pejsa
AU - A. Bari
AU - J. B. Tenenbaum
AU - N. Kanwisher
AU - R. A. Andersen
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/30
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.30.762936
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.30.762936v1
AB - How does the brain understand the physical world, predict future events, and plan actions? Are these problems solved by a unified world model, as hypothesized by cognitive scientists and artificial intelligence researchers? Posterior parietal cortex has been implicated in all these functions, but whether the same neurons support each of them is unknown. We recorded from the superior parietal lobule (SPL) of two tetraplegic participants implanted with microelectrode arrays. SPL units preferentially engaged by intuitive physics, judging block-tower stability and viewing naturalistic physical events, also predicted whether moving objects would collide hundreds of milliseconds before contact, generalizing between different physical scenarios. These populations also encoded which hand action the participant intended to perform. These findings identify SPL as a substrate for physical world modeling.
ER -