Actions results from the same neural mechanisms that explain sensation, imagery, concepts, rules, analogies, emotions, and consciousness. Neural representations govern motor operations such as walking and talking. Action selection, however, goes beyond simple associations of perception and motor control, because of deliberations in humans using beliefs, desires, and intentions. The basic neural mechanisms of representation, binding into semantic pointers, and competition among pointers function to produce actions. Intentions are semantic pointers that bind representations of the relevant situation, doing, evaluation, and self. Intentions are embodied in that representing the situation includes perceptions, doing the action includes motor representations, and performing the evaluation is an emotional process that includes physiology. But intentions can also be transbodied, when representations for the situation, cognitive appraisal, and the self are abstracted by recursive bindings that far surpass sensory-motor inputs.
Neural mechanisms of sensorimotor transformation and action selection
