ABSTRACT
This chapter provides 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. The way in which the goals, plans and intentions of an individual are represented in the brain is the least understood aspect of the action system. The primary motor cortex is responsible for the execution of all voluntary movements of the body. Contention scheduling is the mechanism that selects one particular schema to be enacted from a host of competing schemas, which could be considered a form of “motor attention”. The human brain contains a store of object-dependent actions that may reside in the left inferior parietal lobe and are impaired in ideomotor apraxia. The spinal cord makes connections between the brain and the muscles and controls simple reflexive movements. Dopaminergic brain cells are lost in the pathways linking the substantia nigra and basal ganglia.
