Modern Discoveries in Neuroscience... And What They Reveal About You (Collection)

16. Motor Actions and Tool Use

16-1. Introduction

In Chapters 10–15, we examined individual reflexes and voluntary limb and eye movements. Now, we are ready to consider a higher level of control of motor actions, in which a series of complex movements involving many body parts and even a tool are combined to achieve a certain goal. Here, the model-based control concepts proposed for the cerebellum in terms of forward and inverse models are extended to the cerebral cortex in terms of body schema and motor schema. Cooperation between these cerebral- and cerebellar-model-based controls seems to be the mechanism that enables us to perform complex motor actions such as piano playing and gymnastics. The understanding of these issues is still based ...