16/8/2016

Ideomotor Action | Dimon Institute

Ideomotor Action
Jul 21, 2016

In our last post, we talked a bit about inhibition, which we de ned as refusing to consent to
the idea of doing something. In this post, well talk about ideomotor action and look at the
deep connection between mind and body as it relates to inhibition. Much of this post is
excerpted from Ted Dimons book on neurodynamics, with some new, interspersed
thoughts and examples.
Lets say that I tell a student that I will raise his arm with my hand and that I do not want him
to help me in any waythat is, to leave his arm hanging by his side so that, when I raise it, he does
not tighten his shoulder muscles and does not activate any unnecessary tension in the arm. When
I then lift his arm, he will inevitably help by actually raising his arm for me, performing the action
unconsciously and with his usual strain, even though he has agreed not to. This happens not
because he has chosen to perform the action voluntarily, or because he blindly reacted, but
because I suggested an idea to him that sparked an unconscious motor reaction whereby he lifted
the arm with the unnecessary shoulder and arm tension.
Why is muscular activity connected with ideas, as we read above, and why does it operate at
a level of which we are largely unaware? When we perform an action such as picking
something up or walking to the telephone, we dont simply decide to do the movement,
whereupon the body, in obedience to the command, carries out the decision. The idea of
the act and the muscular activity necessary to its execution form a continuous pathway, so
that the ideational activity and the motor act, for all intents and purposes, form a complete
and uni ed pathway.
This pathway, however, is not mainly conscious. When we perform an action, we may
consciously choose to do that action, but this deliberate choice to act is an exception to the
rule. Most of our actions occur as the result of mental associations that occur
subconsciously, just as most of the muscular activity involved in actions is re exive and
automatic. We have the subjective sense that, when we perform actions, we have chosen
them, but on the whole muscular actions occur habitually and routinely as part of an overall
process that operates, as in animals, at an instinctive or subconscious level.
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Ideomotor Action | Dimon Institute

The process by which we have an idea and that idea issues in a motor actwhich William
James, borrowing from an earlier physiologist, called ideomotor actionexpresses very well
the notion that motor acts do not issue from an overseeing will but are part of a complex
psychophysical process. When James rst elaborated this concept, the notion that action
was somehow mysteriously controlled by an overseeing will was prevalent. The mindor at
least the higher parts of human behavior, such as consciousness and free willseemed to be
operated by spirit-stu , which seemed to possess the special power of dictating how
action took place. William James, who was trying to place psychology on a scienti c footing,
argued that there was no such spirit-stu , no mysterious will that could tell the body what
to do. Actions, he said, were the result of ideas that issued into motor acts, and
deliberationthe process by which we think about and arrive at a conscious decision to do
somethingwas simply a more complicated case of this normal process.

Today, we take William Jamess viewwhose ideas foreshadowed much of modern

neuroscience, and who was one of its earliest exponentsfor granted. The notion of an
overseeing will survives, perhaps, in the form of the belief that the pre-frontal cortex, with
its executive functions, can command and oversee decision-making. But it is now clear that
acts issue from ideas, the two elements operating as part of a total system. It is also
increasingly clear that most of the processes involved in action are unconsciousthe
operation of stretch re exes, the integration of sensory and motor impulses, the complex
computations taking place higher up in the brain. The tennis player who is about to hit a
ball, the pianist who negotiates a di cult passage, the child playing basketballeach is able
to perform these complex actions without thinking about how; each activity is mediated in
very complex ways by processes set in motion simply by the intention to put the ball cross
court, to express a particular emotion in the music, or to sink the ball in the net. Thinking
about the actual steps involved in each act, in fact, would interfere with the execution of the
act, which is exactly why the nervous system is designed in such a way that we have only to
intend for something to happen, and the various steps involved in carrying out our wish
take care of themselves, while we consciously focus on the speci c elements that require
our immediate attention, such as where to place our feet or what kind of sound we want to
make.

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Ideomotor Action | Dimon Institute

To come back to the problem raised in our last post, what this means is that the act of
sitting in a chair will always include neck tension, because that tension is linked to our idea
of the action itself. If we want to learn not to tense our neck muscles when we sit down, we
need to inhibit not the neck tension, but the entire act of which the neck tension is a part.
Once we inhibit that stimulus to react, we can conceive of a new action that does not
include that habitual tension (hence, the usefulness of procedures such as the monkey
position), and instead make a conscious decision to choose the new action. The moment we
revert back to the notion of sitting, we call on our engrained habitual use. This is why the
problem of inhibition is so intimately linked with mind and body: the problem isnt just
bodily tension but the psychophysical functioning whole.

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Ideomotor Action | Dimon Institute

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