Definition
The brain represents actions and this information is used to prepare and execute voluntary movements. Action representations are also drawn upon when we imagine a movement or when we observe and understand actions of others. As regards the underlying brain structures, action representations involve brain activity in the frontal and parietal lobes.
Characteristics
Different Pathways for Perception and Action
Action and perception mutually depend on one another (e.g. when we look for a pen on our desk we first need to detect it visually before picking it up) and it is not evident that the underlying mechanisms can in fact dissociate. Visual input from the retina first reaches occipital cortex and the visual information is then further processed in the ventral and dorsal streams of the brain. Ungerleider and Mishkin [1] postulate that the dorsal stream, from the occipital primary visual areas to the inferior parietal lobule, is involved in the perception of where objects are...
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References
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Acknowledgement
We are grateful to the Swiss National Science Foundation (PDFM1-114406).
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© 2008 Springer-Verlag GmbH Berlin Heidelberg
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Bamert, L., Mast, F.W. (2008). Action Representation. In: Binder, M.D., Hirokawa, N., Windhorst, U. (eds) Encyclopedia of Neuroscience. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-29678-2_58
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-29678-2_58
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