Dr. John Medina begins by telling us:

Perhaps the seminal component of any clinician’s behavioral repertoire is the ability to understand the conscious motivations and intentions of their clients. This article addresses the work of conscious motivations at the neuroanatomical level.

I seldom address the notion of consciousness—let alone motivations—in this column for a very good reason. Nobody really knows what they are or even if there is a “they.” The literature is confusing, but it hasn’t stopped researchers from speculating on possible neuroanatomical and biochemical substrates that undergird the phenomena. Without a broad consensus about what is being studied, there can be no neurons, let alone molecules, for active experimental consideration. After all these years, researchers have yet to isolate an area of the brain solely devoted to the experience of consciousness. There may be none.

Given the importance of these issues to the mental health professions, I revisit the concept of motivations from time to time—but only when the data are conservatively presented, with sober, modest conclusions. The findings described here originate from experiments that have attempted to determine how we voluntarily choose to perform a motor task (action planning). This work requires reviewing background information on association cortices and the neural substrates behind a decision to initiate voluntary action. http://brainrules.blogspot.com/2011/...Brain+Rules%29

Dr. Medina discusses the problems associated with getting a better understanding of the work of conscious motivations at the neuroanatomical level. He concludes thusly:

It appears that the parietal lobe contributes to the conscious experience of intention, at least in regard to motor movement. These results cement 1 more brick onto the great construction project that seeks to define intention. But they hardly hint at the overall building.

Pushing the edge of our understanding into the murky world of association cortex only means that future experiments will be trickier to interpret. Electrical stimulation mapping, as good as it is, is necessarily a blunt instrument that stimulates thousands of neurons simultaneously. Not isolated modules, these regions connect to each other in complex, little-understood ways. That the regions produce different behaviors is an important finding but not a defining one.

How do the frontal and motor aspects of volitional experience differ from the parietal, sensory versions? What factors stimulate the parietal lobes in the first place? What about remote effects?

Questions such as these remain to be answered and are just a few of the many that researchers will face as they attempt to define intentional and conscious experiences.

Despite how ill-informed we are about the workings of the brain, Dr. Medina is telling us we have barely scratched the surface. The more we think we know the more there is to find out.

[mel80]

WOW you really do post amazing things I really love the coloured parts of the brain chart makes for more interesting reading thats for sure

[mala]

Lynne Mctaggart wrote a fab book on intention and oprah says that intention rules the world, but the old adage the road to hell is paved with good intentions comes to mind. One can intend to do good, but I think emotions have a role and with mental health issues its far too complex.