Supplementary motor area

I am including a detailed discussion of the supplementary motor area (SMA), a bilateral region of the cerebral cortex that functionally includes what Eccles termed the liaison brain. It is now well known that the mental act of intention acts on the SMA’s where there is an inventory of a vast number of the stored, encoded subroutines of all learned motor programs, including those for speech. It provides an entre into specific motor activities that implement particular intentions. More specifically, a mental intention stimulates appropriate modular programs so that nerve impulses are activated from the library, or archive, of encoded programs, the liaison brain of Eccles. The mere thought of a motor action in the absence of a deliberate motor response, such as moving a finger or limb, bilaterally stimulates the SMA’s. This relationship has been confirmed by transcranial magnetic stimulation during PET imaging. It is a prime example of interaction between the immaterial mind and the neuron based codes of the physical brain.

Stan Lennard