National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 28(115), p. 7440-7445, 2018
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Significance We provide evidence that our intentions can be fragmented in various components subserved by partially dissociable neural circuits. We found that the decision of what to do, when to do it, and whether to do it depends on separable systems that go beyond the mesial prefrontal wall of previous proposals, involving cortical and subcortical brain regions in a component-specific manner. In addition, we found that deciding whether to act or not requires strong interhemispheric interactions of the frontal lobes. This explicit evidence of dissociable neural foundations of intentional actions will guide the exploration of brain disorders of specific components of intentionality.