Directed movement in the frog: motor choice, spatial representation, free will?

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the factors affecting movements made by frogs in response to prey items. Frogs respond rapidly and accurately to prey items, but the processes involved in doing so have proven to have so little in common with stereotyped stimulus/response relations that explorations of alternative ways of thinking about how the nervous system works are necessary. The frog displays a fairly sophisticated level of choice and elements of free will. Studies on the frog imply is that there is a quite sophisticated information processing capability in its subcortical circuitry. The cortex and its associated afferent and efferent projections represent a parallel input/output system with respect to the external world. A sense of self emerges from the monitoring of subcortical circuitry by the cortex, and a sense of choice arises from the capability of the cortex to exercise an executive control on the potential outputs of that subcortical circuitry.

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