Does the brain control muscles or movements?
Wednesday, May 7, 2008 - 12:56
in Biology & Nature
One of the major scientific questions about the brain is how it can translate the simple intent to perform an action—say, reach for a glass—into the dynamic, coordinated symphony of muscle movements required for that action. The neural instructions for such actions originate in the brain`s primary motor cortex, and the puzzle has been whether the neurons in this region encode the details of individual muscle activities or the high-level commands that govern kinetics—the direction and velocity of desired movements.