This paper concerns how motor actions are neurally represented and coded. Action planning and motor preparation can be studied using a specific type of representational activity, motor imagery. A close functional equivalence between motor imagery and motor preparation is suggested by the positive effects of imagining movements on motor learning, the similarity between the neural structures involved, and the similar physiological correlates observed in both imaging and preparing. The content of motor representations can be inferred from motor images at a (...) macroscopic level, based on global aspects of the action and the motor rules and constraints which predict the spatial path and kinematics of movements. A more microscopic neural account calls for a representation of object-oriented action. Object attributes are processed in different neural pathways depending on the kind of task the subject is performing. During object-oriented action, a pragmatic representation is activated in which object affordances are transformed into specific motor schemas. Animal as well as human clinical data implicate the posterior parietal and premotor cortical areas in schema instantiation. A mechanism is proposed that is able to encode the desired goal of the action and is applicable to different levels of representational organization. (shrink)

The neural bases of behavior are often discussed in terms of perceptual, cognitive, and motor stages, defined within an information processing framework that was originally inspired by models of human abstract problem solving. Here, we review a growing body of neurophysiological data that is difficult to reconcile with this influential theoretical perspective. As an alternative foundation for interpreting neural data, we consider frameworks borrowed from ethology, which emphasize the kinds of real-time interactive behaviors that animals have engaged in for millions (...) of years. In particular, we discuss an ethologically-inspired view of interactive behavior as simultaneous processes that specify potential motor actions and select between them. We review how recent neurophysiological data from diverse cortical and subcortical regions appear more compatible with this parallel view than with the classical view of serial information processing stages. (shrink)

Recent advances in the cognitive neuroscience of action have considerably enlarged our understanding of human motor cognition. In particular, the activity of the mirror system, first discovered in the brain of non-human primates, provides an observer with the understanding of a perceived action by means of the motor simulation of the agent's observed movements. This discovery has raised the prospects of a motor theory of social cognition. Since human social cognition includes the ability to mindread, many motor theorists of social (...) cognition try to bridge the gap between motor cognition and mindreading by endorsing a simulation account of mindreading. Here, we express our skepticism about the motor theory of social cognition. (shrink)

Performing an action and observing it activate the same internal representations of action. The representations are therefore shared between self and other. But what exactly is shared? At what level within the hierarchical structure of the motor system do SRA occur? Understanding the content of SRA is important in order to decide what theoretical work SRA can perform. In this paper, we provide some conceptual clarification by raising three main questions: are SRA semantic or pragmatic representations of action?; are SRA (...) sensory or motor representations?; are SRA representations of the action as a global unit or as a set of elementary motor components? After outlining a model of the motor hierarchy, we conclude that the best candidate for SRA is intentions in action, defined as the motor plans of the dynamic sequence of movements. We shed new light on SRA by highlighting the causal efficacy of intentions in action. This in turn explains phenomena such as inhibition of imitation. (shrink)