Neural Representations for Action

Neurophysiological data gathered from different sorts of paradigms that reveal the presence of underlying neural processes which can be related to representations for action are reviewed, leading to the notion of distributed representations stored as patterns of activation networks.

Abstract

Goal directed behaviour is often internally generated which implies that the generation of action involves a representational step. One of the challenges of cognitive neuroscience is to discover the neural mechanism that underlies the representation of both intention and goal and fuses them into an integrated action. This paper reviews neurophysiological data gathered from different sorts of paradigms that reveal the presence of underlying neural processes which can be related to representations for action. Taken together, these data lead to the notion of distributed representations stored as patterns of activation networks.