ABSTRACT
Cognitive systems are pervasive in the understanding of the organization of action. This chapter deals with a traditional 19th-century view of sensory-motor function and the cortex, to a modern view about cognitive systems and the brain, then to the basal ganglia and the idea that this motor area is involved in complex cognitive tasks, to regions of both the cortex and the basal ganglia that underlie the organization of cognitive tasks. Reenvisioning cognitive systems amid motor control is a step toward understanding something about how willing is realized in behavioral/neural systems. Diverse cognitive systems are recruited toward the analysis of movement, of goal-intended action. Regions of the brain are active when one observes another perform an action and when one imitates the action that was just observed. The perception of action and the generation of action are recruited by common cognitive/neural mechanisms that perhaps reflect “ideomotor” regulation.
