Cognitive Science & Psychology Division, ULAB

From the moment they are born, infants begin to build an internal model of their physical world. This understanding of physical laws, commonly referred to as intuitive physics, develops over time, enabling individuals to successfully explore and interact with their surroundings. However, the cognitive mechanisms through which humans acquire this understanding of physical quantities, such as mass, are unknown. This paper discusses current understanding of a distinct but foundational part of the intuitive physics engine, mass representation. Current research has localized mass representation to dorsal frontoparietal, ventral-temporal, and dorsal premotor areas of the cortex. However, upon thorough literary analysis, the regions primarily responsible in this process have been narrowed down to the frontal and parietal regions. The extent to which these brain regions are responsible seems to be task dependent, opening avenues for further research to investigate the regions activated during other tasks involving different physical characteristics.