"How we do what we want: An ideomotor approach to voluntary action." Bernhard Hommel

Date: November 19, 2009

Time: 3:30-5:30

Location: BRB 1103

Bernhard Hommel (Psychology, Leiden) Title: How we do what we want: An ideomotor approach to voluntary action. Abstract: Voluntary action is anticipatory and, hence, must depend on associations between actions and their perceivable effects. This talk provides an overview of recent behavioral, electrophysiological, and imaging work from our lab on the acquisition and functional role of action-effect associations in infants, children, and adults. It shows that action effects are acquired from very early on and are still integrated spontaneously in adults. Once acquired, action effects serve to select actions by means of a network including the (developing) frontal cortex/SMA, connecting via hippocampus to the perceptual areas that code for sensory action effects. However, the impact and role of action-effect codes are regulated by the agent's processing mode and intentions.