ABSTRACT
Action is our way of interfacing with the world, and our means of putting all our goals and desires into practice. Action has traditionally been viewed as the endpoint of cognition. Having perceived an object and made a cognitive decision about what to do with it, we may then, depending on our goals, act toward it. Findings from cognitive neuroscience have radically shaken up this viewpoint. For example, in some situations it is possible to accurately act toward objects that have not been consciously seen. In addition, it has been claimed that not only is our action system equipped to produce our own actions, it may also be used to understand the actions of others-an important part of social cognition. Moreover, the processes that generate and control actions also appear to generate and control thought and cognition more generally. These ideas will also be explored in this chapter, together with an overview of more traditional areas of research on the “acting brain,” such as Parkinson’s disease, the role of the basal ganglia and tool use.
