Embodied cognition, endurance running and evolution

Embodied Cognition suggests that cognitive processes are deeply rooted into our bodily morphology and its sensorimotor interactions with the environment. Evolutionary Embodied Cognition suggests that our cognitive abilities are inscribed within the evolutionary trajectory of our dynamic bodily architectures. This paper extends the framework of Evolutionary Embodied Cognition, by combining it, for the first time, with the Endurance Running Hypothesis, which suggests that our bodily morphology has been massively shaped by an evolutionary history in which our ancestors’ ability to run played a crucial role. We analyze several pieces of anatomical, physiological, biomechanical, neurobiological and neurochemical evidence, in line with the Endurance Running Hypothesis, to extend Evolutionary Embodied Cognition to the case of running. We build a framework suggesting a special link between the bodily, motoric capacity of endurance running, and a particular set of our cognitive abilities, so as to show a special relation between running and the mind, via body and brain.