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Cognition and the supplementary motor complex

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 10, page 78 (2009)Cite this article

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In our recent Review article (Functional role of the supplementary and pre-supplementary motor areas. Nature Rev. Neurosci. 9, 856–869 (2008))1, we discussed the role of the supplementary motor complex (SMC) in different aspects of action. Leek and Johnston (Nature Rev. Neurosci. 19 Dec 2008 (doi: 10.1038/nrn2478-c1))2 draw attention to an interesting matter that we did not discuss: the relation between SMC activity and the performance of tasks seemingly remote from action. The example they refer to is that of mental rotation, but several other activities might just as easily be considered. Our omission of these is not accidental, for the following reasons.

First, it is much more difficult to divorce a putative cognitive process from action than is commonly supposed. Indeed, nothing could be said about a mental activity that was not anchored at some point in the subject's behaviour, even if only in a verbal report (which is, of course, a kind of action). Attempts to dissociate non-action components on the basis of timing (for example, by introducing a delay between stimulus and response, as in the classic delayed-saccade task) are fundamentally insecure because as long as neural activity has temporal priority over an action it may be materially contributing to it. Nor is it possible to rely on the omission of action in a particular instance, because the mere potentiality of action is sufficient to explain activation in such situations: the brain, as we know, is a predictive system3. Moreover, omissions are actions themselves, legally and semantically4,5, and resemble commissions behaviourally and neurally6. Thus, when two sets of circumstances differ in their habitual association with some potential action, their contrast will always be explicable by action-related activity regardless of whether an action is performed or not. In short, actions are characterized by their conditions as much as by their means or ends.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Parashkev Nachev and Masud Husain are at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Institute of Neurology, University College London, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AR, UK.,

    Parashkev Nachev & Masud Husain

  2. Christopher Kennard is at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Imperial College london, St Dunstan's Road, London, W6 8RP, UK.,

    Christopher Kennard

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  1. Parashkev Nachev
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  2. Christopher Kennard
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  3. Masud Husain
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Correspondence to Masud Husain.

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Nachev, P., Kennard, C. & Husain, M. Cognition and the supplementary motor complex. Nat Rev Neurosci 10, 78 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2478-c2

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