Intentional movement

Voluntary movements are those made purposely. Most of the neurons in the motor system fire hundreds of milliseconds before any muscle contraction occur showing that movements are designed. This is essential as similar motor tasks can be performed in different ways depending on the context, a property known as motor equivalence. For illustration, driving a large truck needs a different motor strategy than driving a small car.

The movement is executed by the output of motor commands that identify the right temporal series of muscle activation. Sensory feedback during a movement, for illustration from proprioceptors like muscle spindles and the visual system, is used to fine-tune its execution therefore the performance matches the desired goal. The plan of voluntary movements and the demonstration of motor commands for their execution is complete by the motor cortex that has its outputs through the lateral motor pathways.