The re-appraisal of the body and its emotions in cognitive and interpersonal processes began in the 1980s, with The Embodied Mind by Varela, Thompson and Rosch constituting a fundamental reference point, as we have seen (see supra, par. 2.2). In contrast with the mind-computer analogy that characterized classic cognitive science1 and the subsequent computational and connectivist developments2 – both hinging on the idea of the mind as an abstract entity and a substance independent of the body that manipulates information in symbolic format according to a series of formal syntactic rules – the rediscovery of an “embodied mind” emerged from a set of interdisciplinary studies in which a fundamental role was played by the developments in neurosciences,3 in particular cognitive neurosciences. The latter, using a series of non-invasive techniques for displaying the functioning of the brain cortex and nuclei (such as functional magnetic resonance imaging fMRI, positron emission tomography PET, and nuclear magnetic resonance NMR), showed how the brain makes cognition possible and, more generally, how the mind functions in relation to activities like memory, learning, emotion and the unconscious processes.