This book offers a fundamental new theory of motor cortex organization: the rendering of the movement repertoire onto the cortex. The action repertoire of an animal is highly dimensional, whereas the cortical sheet is two-dimensional. Rendering the action space onto the cortex therefore results in a complex pattern, explaining the otherwise inexplicable details of motor cortex organization. This book includes a complete history of motor cortex research from its discovery to the present, a discussion of the major issues in motor cortex research, and an account of recent experiments that led to ... More

This book offers a fundamental new theory of motor cortex organization: the rendering of the movement repertoire onto the cortex. The action repertoire of an animal is highly dimensional, whereas the cortical sheet is two-dimensional. Rendering the action space onto the cortex therefore results in a complex pattern, explaining the otherwise inexplicable details of motor cortex organization. This book includes a complete history of motor cortex research from its discovery to the present, a discussion of the major issues in motor cortex research, and an account of recent experiments that led to the book's “action map” view. Though focused on motor cortex, the book includes a range of topics from an explanation of how primates put food in their mouths, to the origins of social behavior such as smiling and laughing, to the mysterious link between movement disorders and autism.