Neural correlates of ideomotor effect anticipations

•We present a direct neuroscientific investigation of ideomotor effect anticipations.•Such effect anticipations are relayed to motor centers via parietal circuits.•Parahippocampal structures retrieve learned response–effect (R–E) associations.•This process is mirrored in behavioral R–E compatibility effects.

How does our mind produce physical, goal-directed action of our body? For about 200 years, philosophers and psychologists hypothesized the transformation from mind to body to rely on the anticipation of an action’s sensory consequences. Whereas this hypothesis received tremendous support from behavioral experiments, the neural underpinnings of action control via such ideomotor effect anticipations are virtually unknown. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the present study identified the inferior parietal cortex and the parahippocampal gyrus as key regions for this type of action control – setting the stage for a neuroscientific framework for explaining action control by ideomotor effect anticipations and thus enabling a synthesis of psychological and neuroscientific approaches to human action.