Templates for Action

Abstract

The feature of a brain state that tends to produce some specified experiential feedback can reasonably be expected to be a highly organized large-scale pattern of brain activity that, to be effective, must endure for a period of perhaps tens or hundreds of milliseconds. It must endure for an extended period in order to be able to bring into being the coordinated sequence of neuron firings needed to produce the intended feedback. Thus the neural (or brain) correlate of an intentional act should be something like a collection of the vibratory modes of a drumhead in which many particles move in a coordinated way for an extended period of time.