ABSTRACT
Voluntary movements are those made intentionally. Many neurons in the motor system fire hundreds of milliseconds before any muscle contraction occurs showing that movements are planned. This is necessary because the same motor tasks can be performed in various ways depending on the context, a property called motor equivalence. For example, driving a large truck needs a different motor strategy than driving a small car. The movement is executed by the output of motor commands which specify the correct temporal sequence of muscle activation. Sensory feedback during a movement, for example from proprioceptors such as muscle spindles and the visual system, is used to fine-tune its execution so that the performance matches the desired goal. The planning of voluntary movements and the elaboration of motor commands for their execution is done by the motor cortex which has its outputs via the lateral motor pathways.
