Topic: motor neurophysiology

fMRI results have shown that the supplementary motor area (SMA) and the basal ganglia, most often discussed in their roles in generating action, are engaged by beat-based timing even in the absence of movement. Some have argued that the motor system is “recruited” by beat-based timing tasks due to the presence of motor-like timescales, but a deeper understanding of the roles of these motor structures is lacking. Reviewing a body of motor neurophysiology literature and drawing on the “active inference” framework, I argue that we can see the motor and timing functions of these brain areas as exa

The ability to decide and act autonomously is a distinctive feature of human cognition. From a motor neurophysiology viewpoint, these 'voluntary' actions can be distinguished by the lack of an obvious triggering sensory stimulus: the action is considered to be a product of thought, rather than a reflex result of a specific input. A reverse engineering approach shows that such actions are caused by neurons of the primary cortex, which in turn depend on medial frontal areas, and finally a combination of prefrontal cortical connections and subcortical drive from basal ganglia loops. One tradit